exchange tells aaron about the challenges of thriving in a post—brexit world amid global competition. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. does it matter where the stuff we all buy is made? from electronics to cars and furniture, it seems like a growing amount of manufacturing is moving west. geopolitical tensions, the fallout from the coronavirus, pandemic, and financial incentives have made many of the world's biggest companies, including the likes of apple, sony and hyundai, rethink theirsupply chains, either shortening them or diversifying them so they can keep the profits coming in. one of the biggest problems is the relationship between america and china. the two countries�* leaders have been meeting at the apec summit in san francisco. that's the asia pacific economic cooperation forum. ties are often described as being at their worst since the world's two biggest economies established diplomatic relations more than a0 years ago. and that has consequences, because the us is the world's biggest consumer, and china has come to be known as the world's factory. thanks to the presence of the us and china in the group, apec represents 62% of the global economy and more than half of global trade. but more than half of the stuff they sell each other is still subject to tariffs or taxes, and new trade restrictions have been added sincejoe biden became the president of the united states. one consequence of that has been less investment by foreign companies in china. it was down by a third this september when we compare it to the same month last year. at the same time, the us has introduced the inflation reduction act, which means the investment of $369 billion in the climate crisis and energy security. in reality, that spells huge economic incentives for companies making everything from cars to computer chips to do that in the united states. can we build supply chains that are more resilient, more secure in the face of threats like pandemics and natural disasters? and that will form a strong foundation for a clean economy for tomorrow. the global economy is recovering, but its momentum remains sluggish. industrial and supply chains are still under the threat of interruption, and protectionism is rising. all of these are grave problems. meanwhile, china is trying to breathe new life into an economy still struggling to recover from the pandemic. it's investing heavily in its factories. and this month said it would remove all restrictions on foreign but is that too little, too late when it comes to the competition stealing a march? mexico now has a 15% share of the goods that the us imports. this means it's overtaken china as the number one supplier. meanwhile, china's share of all the stuff imported into the european union has fallen tojust under 21% from a peak of 22.4% in 2020. but it remains the largest provider of goods to europe. supplying europe and the united states is a big part of the global economy. mexico, poland, morocco and indonesia are some of the countries that have seen big surges of investment as companies such as swedish furniture giant ikea move production west. as a total sourcing and supply, two thirds of that world's supply and sourcing across the globe of ikea, it comes from europe. so china is important, but it's not the majority of our sourcing. well, a little earlier, i caught up with one of the top trade experts at boston consulting group. it's one of the planet's leading business advisors, which helps companies navigate the myriad of complexities within the world of global trade in the 21st century. and they've recently published a major piece of research on how global manufacturing is on the move. michael mcadoo, welcome. you've done a big study that illustrates how manufacturing is essentially shifting west across the world. so where is it going and why? what we're seeing is manufacturing, of course, following the classic factors of technology and geopolitics. and so we see big increases in manufacturing in southeast asia, in india, places like mexico, as well as manufacturing coming back in certain industries to more domestic markets closer to home, in places like the us and the european union. well, apple is a very good example of a major tech firm that slowly appears to be moving its manufacturing away from china, with india being one of the big winners there. but is it just tech firms that are moving or other industries and sectors, too? there are many different sectors that are affected differently by this. we look at four factors that are driving some of these shifts. one of them is basically unit economics. so what is that mix of labour versus capital in a product? what is the tariff structure that might or might not be in place between countries? the other factor would be looking at just the policy thrusts. and so if you look at the tech sector, you see a lot of policy thrusts in the united states around re—localizing tech manufacturing to the us. you see this also in electric vehicle value chains. and so some of those policy moves are causing the economics of business to shift. you would also see firms worried about supply chain resilience. i think what people learned during covid is that a reliance on a single source country or even a single company supplier could lead you to vulnerabilities when difficulties arise. and finally, we're seeing some people are moving forward, more environmental concerns. so your research identifies what you label as supply chain pressures being a big reason for companies moving their manufacturing. and one of them, of course, was that towards the end of the pandemic, china's market was still largely shut, so companies were forced to make decisions. the long period of lockdown of the chinese economy and then some partial opening with more localized lockdowns did cause concerns on the part of many companies that were sourcing things there on how they could continue to supply their factories or markets in other parts of the world. numbers from the chinese government seem to show there's been a big drop in foreign investment into the country, which is over into the country, which has over the last 20 years come to be known as the world's factory. now, why is that and why does it matter? well, foreign investment is always tricky to measure, but there's no question that foreign investment across the world is down. if you look at the peak year of 2016, it was about 2 trillion. if you look at last year, it was about 1.3. certainly, china has seen that drop. part of that was, of course, that we were not even able to make those investments because much of the economy was shut down. but what we do see is that, whereas companies were placing a lot of foreign investment in china over the couple of decades following china's joining the global economy, now we see companies often taking a balanced approach where they'll say, we've got investments in china, we've got production in china, we'd now like to look at some alternatives to serve other growing markets such as india or south east asia. so i think it's really more of a rebalancing that we're seeing going on. and the net result is there's potentially less of that share going to china than before. when china joined the world trade organization, it almost began an era of companies looking to cut costs and to reduce their cost base. do you think that we're now seeing a reversal of that trend, that companies are really focused on other measures now? i think cost is always going to be important, right? i think what's shifted is the relative cost in china versus other opportunities or other markets is different than what it was, say, 25 years ago. so you now see that chinese labour has become more productive. chinese labour costs have risen as well, in fact, faster than productivity has risen. you've seen a slowing down of the ability of china to bring new workers from the rural areas into the urban areas. they've got an ongoing demographic challenge with an ageing population and not enough replacement rate. meanwhile, other countries have become more skilled, have been able to move themselves into those value chains. and you can think about some of the more labour—intensive ones, like garments and apparel, moving to places like bangladesh. you see some of the more assembly oriented employment moving to other countries such as india or places in southeast asia. the new dynamics of the global manufacturing landscape means you can actually get resiliency without paying much of a premium. and that's why people are making these moves. are there moves by china to try to redress the problem. for example, making it easier for investors to put their money into the country? china certainly is aware of the need forforeign investment. if you look at some recent measures that were taken by the chinese government, it was a set of policies to encourage provincial and local governments to facilitate foreign investment coming into the country. so there are some moves there that are happening. of course, foreign investment decisions are not made overnight. you know, people take a long time to analyse the pros and cons of a given investment, and certainly alternatives. so i think, over time, you may see some some comeback in that in some of those figures. but for now, we haven't seen that yet. us consumer spending is estimated to be somewhere between 10 to 15% of the global economy. so just how influential is the world's biggest economy when it comes to deciding where things are made? well, i think that ability to access the us market is critical. same for the european union, the other large consumer market. and so, what our manufacturing study shows is that there's many places from which you can do that, including places that have in existence free trade agreements with the us. i would point to mexico with the agreement known as usmca, or places like morocco that also has a free trade agreement with the us. and so there are places that you can do this and enjoy the benefits that those agreements provide. but nonetheless, even if there isn't an agreement, as there is not between most countries in southeast asia and the united states, you could still find that the economics make sense just given those lower us tariffs across the board. michael mcadoo, thank you very much. thank you. as we've mentioned, the us is of course the world's biggest economy and that's one reason why the decisions its companies make are so influential when it comes to the global picture. with the likes of nike, apple and dell, these are just some of the big names to look at countries other than china for their manufacturing. so i've been catching up with the head of international policy at the us chamber of commerce, which represents about three million businesses ranging in size from the biggest to the smallest. john murphy, welcome to the programme. president biden has repeatedly talked about growing manufacturing in america, but how much influence is that type of politics having on boardroom decisions about where to manufacture? in fact, us manufacturing has been growing pretty briskly in recent years. us manufacturing production over the past three decades has risen by about two thirds, and we've in particular seen this over the past decade when us manufacturers have added about two million newjobs. however, manufacturing is never going to be again the kind of mass employment generator that it was in the 20th century. today, there's about 13 million americans in manufacturing. that's out of an entire labour force of 150 million americans. so it's well under 10%. nonetheless, it's a critical part of the us economy. your recent survey found that 28%, so over a quarter of companies, plan to move manufacturing out of asia in the next five years. is that some or all of their manufacturing? certainly companies today are rethinking their supply lines. really, the big wake up call was russia's expanded invasion of ukraine last year, which sent a signal into boardrooms that geopolitical risk is real and we need to take it seriously. and this has led boardrooms, ceos, to consider how do we go about de—concentrating and diversifying our supply chains? consequently, near—shoring or reshoring into the americas is something that many companies are looking at. but there's a lot of factors that go into those decisions and exactly where to place a new investments. so how important will china continue to be, and for that matter, the rest of asia? it's hard to quit china. china is a huge manufacturing centre where for certain products it has advantages that are hard to replicate. having said that, many companies are looking at new strategies like a china plus one strategy, a china plus two strategy, so that they don't have all their eggs in one basket. there's different depending on what sector you're talking about. you'll see that in areas that are dependent on labour costs, it's gotten more expensive to produce in china. but when companies look to make their supply chains more resilient by making stuff in a different place, what options are they finding? what are the good options? well, what we found in a recent survey that we conducted is that companies have been looking at nations here in the western hemisphere as alternatives to china and to asia generally. and the factors that go into that are really not a revelation. they found that one of the real constraints for further investment in mexico is concerns about safety and security and the rule of law. in other parts of latin america, the considerations might be different — in central america and the caribbean basin, its logistics, the quality of the infrastructure, the ability to move goods quickly, safely, cheaply to market. and in other places, it may be the labour costs. the inflation reduction act, introduced by president biden, is offering huge incentives to industries from computer chips and car makers really related to the low—carbon economy. so how much does that change the maths when it comes to making more in america, and making profitably? it's going to take some time to really assess the impact. we have seen a big boom in manufacturing construction, which isn't the same thing as a boom in manufacturing, but presumably could lead to one further down the road. of course, a lot of this is concentrated in a handful of sectors, like batteries for electric vehicles, the electric vehicles themselves, and other manufactured goods that go into renewable energy. however, one of the political questions about this is what's going to happen, what's going to be the job creation impact? these are often areas that are very capital—intensive, meaning that lots of dollars are required in investment and lots of expensive capital goods, but they don't necessarily create lots of jobs. so the political calculus is a little bit at odds with the industrial calculus. there is, of course, a political or geopolitical backdrop here, which is very important, and that is the tension between us and china and tariffs being imposed. how damaging have they been to manufacturing and global trade, and do you think that somehow they might be eased sometime soon? the tariffs that were imposed in 2017 and 201,8 on nearly all imports from from china, did have a big impact on the us manufacturing economy. after all, about half of what the united states imports from china is inputs for american manufacturers, and it made it more expensive to manufacture in the united states. we saw that by 2019 there was actually a downturn, a contraction in the us manufacturing sector at a time when the economy overall was booming. there are other factors today that seem to loom larger in the calculus of ceos and boardrooms, about where to source manufacturing and where to source inputs. when you look at what's happening next door to you in mexico, a good chunk of the new manufacturing capacity is actually coming from subsidiaries of chinese companies. so is it a bit of a falsehood to actually say mexico is a big winner of this manufacturing shift, if much of the profits end up going back to china anyway? mexico really has emerged as a manufacturing hub, and this is something that's evolved over the past 30 or a0 years since nafta and the opening up of the mexican economy, which had been very closed before. and it's been a magnet for investment from around the world that includes from china, but also from europe, where major european automakers have massive investments in mexico and certainly american companies as well, well over $100 billion of foreign direct investment in mexico. i think the challenge for mexico to capitalise on this moment of really rare opportunity, given the tensions between the us and china, the challenge for mexico is to figure out how can they provide a better business environment that has the security that investment requires, that can provide the skilled labour force and really a regulatory environment that is transparent and predictable? the broad intention, of course, by president biden is to expand the manufacturing sector in the united states. but then comes the question of who is going to buy these extra goods that he wants to make? is that going to be americans or people in other countries? it's a serious question to ask. today, about half of everything us manufacturers make is destined for export markets. so the us really needs to take trade policy a lot more serious than it has in recent years. the european union has been negotiating free trade agreements around the world with 80 or 90 countries. the uk is active, canada and of course all across the indo—pacific, we see new trade agreements coming into force. the united states, however, hasn't negotiated a new trade agreement in about a decade. and our our ability to access foreign markets, where we might hope to sell our manufactured goods, is compromised by the fact that we don't have many of those trade agreements and we have to pay high tariffs in those markets. so clearly, we need to redouble efforts to get market opening trade agenda going here in the united states. but if we get more manufacturing moving to countries where it's simply more expensive, and that does feed into prices, interest rates, therefore, have to stay higher in america in order to control that inflation. does that not run the risk again of the us economy tipping into recession, when it seems thus far to have escaped it? generally speaking, the impact is probably muted. having said that, trade is part of the solution to the price pressures we've seen in recent years. the ability to source goods from a variety of markets helps to tamp down those price pressures and keep inflation in check. john murphy, thank you very much. thank you. and now for something different. stock exchanges are at the heart of our financial system, helping companies sell their shares so they can raise money to invest and grow. but that all gets a bit more complicated when you try to make a major expansion of your own in the middle of a pandemic and with the huge potential for upheaval of a political change like brexit. well, aaron hazelhurst has been catching up with one man still digesting those changes. the head of the london stock exchange group. david schwimmer. a real pleasure having you on the show. and david, let me start with you, because you've been at the helm of right here the london stock exchange group for some five years at a time that's been well characterised by some pretty, pretty big strategic challenges. one of them, of course, brexit, which has had a huge impact on many of your customers. what impact has that had on on your business? it has not had a dramatic impact on our business. there were some big questions about a few different parts of the business. we moved some trading of european domiciled equities to amsterdam and that's worked fine. we have had a lot of questions about clearing, and the clearing of interest rate swaps, and the eu's desire to have that moved from london to the eu. but our customers didn't want to do that. so we have been consistent throughout the process of really doing what our customers wanted to do. we continue to work with the eu. this is actually an issue. here we are. seven years after the brexit vote. and this clearing discussion is still still ongoing. but i think it's very clear to all involved now that there will not be any kind of cut off of access to lch ltd, which is this business. of course, another big challenge over the past few years has been the big p, the pandemic, the covid pandemic. and, david, that's presented a challenge to many businesses in particular. it's been transformative in terms of the relationship, if you will, between employer and an employees. did you see an impact on your own business model? sure. i think the pandemic has been a big change for everyone, and it changed how i thought about myjob in terms of the health and safety of our people. and that became a real priority. and i think that's frankly a healthy change. another big difference that maybe some other companies didn't have to do is the fact that we announced a very large acquisition shortly before the pandemic. what was that? so we acquired the refinitiv business, and this was an acquisition of a great business with 25,000 people around the world. we're now one of the world's leading data and analytics providers, and it has been strategically transformational for us. but to go through that transformation during the pandemic, probably not something i would recommend. let's talk about artificial intelligence. i mean, it's the front pages at the moment, right? i mean, it is here. it's technology that more and more companies are embracing. how's ai fitting in to this industry? what sort of role does that play? ai is very powerful in terms of helping our customer service team respond to queries that we get from customers, where we have a vast amount of data across our services. in terms of the products that we offer. in terms of our fundamental business of data and data and analytics, we have a huge machine that includes a lot of people working very hard to ingest the data, thousands of people involved in this, and you give them the tools that come with al functionality and natural language processing, makes them much more efficient. so we can process what might have taken literally weeks to process certain data or to ingest certain data we can now do in minutes. so that's incredibly powerful. david, let's talk about this because, there's been a number of firms either delisting or choosing to go public elsewhere. i'm just wondering, why is there this perceived exodus from the london stock exchange the last ten years or so, i think it's about 23 companies that have chosen to go to new york from the uk. of those, you know, a significant number of them have delisted. i think something like 17 of them are dramatically underperforming the market. and then a couple have done ok. so the first point is it's not an exodus. the broader ipo market globally is in a tough time. there's a risk of environment. the london stock exchange continues to be by far the leading financial centre and leading listing destination in europe, the most international exchange by far, and continues to be very attractive. well, on that point, david schwimmer, a real pleasure, the big boss of the london stock exchange group. thanks very much for your time. much appreciated. thank you. that's all for this week. you can keep up to date with all the latest on the global economy on the bbc news website and the smartphone app. don't forget, you can get in touch with me and some of the team on social media. thanks forjoining. bye bye. hello there. we've seen two different sides to autumn over the last couple of days. friday, i'm sure you'll remember, we had lots of sunshine across the country and temperatures generally near average, although it was a bit cold in scotland. contrast that with the weather we had on saturday, where there was a lot of cloud around but it was a lot milder. temperatures in yeovilton up to 17 degrees celsius. it was also quite windy for some, for example here in west scotland. saturday's weather was all due to this area of low pressure. sunday's weather will all be due to this area of low pressure too. it's not really going anywhere very fast at all. the south—westerly winds we have at the moment will continue to feed in some fairly thick layers of cloud, thick enough to bring outbreaks of mostly light rain and drizzle, although there could be a few heavier bursts mixed in for west scotland and northern ireland at times. so we are looking at a mild start to the day on sunday. near the centre of this low pressure in scotland, it won't be too windy but in contrast to that, the winds picking up across the south coast of england and into southern wales as well. i think towards the south—west coasts, we could see gusts picking up to about a0 mph, so it will be a noticeably blowy kind of day. some further damp weather working from west to east but you do have a chance of seeing a few glimmers of sunshine pushing through the cloud at times. here's our low pressure still with us by monday, slowly slipping away into the north sea and weakening. still bringing cloud and patches of rain but again, there should be a few more brighter spells intermingled, particularly across more inland areas. although still mild, those temperatures are just starting to edge down a little bit as we head through the course of monday. heading into tuesday, we start to see a ridge of high pressure moving in off the atlantic and that should give us better breaks in the cloud, particular across scotland and northern ireland, although there could be a few mist and fog patches to start the day here. maybe one or two showers draped around coastal regions of england and wales but otherwise probably largely dry. temperatures coming down, closer to average for the time of year, about 9—12 degrees celsius for most. now, that mild weather lasting for much of the week. it will often be quite windy. towards the end of the week and next weekend, though, there is a question mark as to how far south we start to see some cooler air moving its way in. what i think we will see is a drop in temperatures and across some of the mountains of northern scotland, it could get cold enough to see some of the showers start to turn a bit wintry. live from washington... ..this is bbc news. the world health organization leads a high—risk humanitarian mission to gaza's largest hospital — as people flee al—shif. families of hostages held by hamas have been demonstrating outside the residence of prime minister, benjamin netanyahu. and taylor swift postpones her upcoming concert in rio dejaneiro due to extreme heat... after a fan died at friday's show. hello, i'm helena humphrey. we're going to bring you some breaking news now — the world health organization has dubbed — the al shifa —a �*death zone. let's take a look at some of what the statement says: