Vance saves Trump's ‘big, beautiful’ bill in Senate
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Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Roger Hearing and on this edition, Donald Trump's huge tax and spending bill has been narrowly passed by the Senate, but it now has to go back to the House of Representatives. Opposition is concentrated on claims it will harm healthcare for the lower paid or that it will increase the huge national debt.

Meanwhile, the bill has reignited the row between the president and his erstwhile friend and advisor Elon Musk. So could that harm the prospects of Musk's company, Tesla? Also on the programme, the new way of blocking AI crawler bots from stealing content from websites. And we visit Europe's longest road and rail bridge as it celebrates its 25th birthday.

But first, Donald Trump's big, beautiful, but highly controversial finance bill has got through the U.S. Senate, but only by casting vote of the Vice President, J.D. Vance. The Senate Majority Leader is the Republican, John Toon. Since we took office in January, Republicans have been laser-focused on achieving the bill before us today. And now we're here, passing legislation that will permanently extend tax relief for hardworking Americans. Mr. President, that will spur economic growth.

and more jobs and opportunities for American workers. That will rebuild our military, secure our borders, unleash American energy, and cut waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs. Senator John Thune, well, his Democratic opposite number, Chuck Schumer, was scathing about the legislation, which passed by only one vote. Today's vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come as the American people see the damage that is done

As hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, as the debt increases, they will see what our colleagues have done, and they will remember it. And we Democrats will make sure they remember it. The American people will not forget the betrayal

Chuck Schumer.

Thanks for being with us. So first of all, where are we in this now? It's going back to the House representatives and they have to consider the whole thing that's been passed over from the Senate? Sure, that's correct, Roger. Right now, the bill is beginning its procedural steps through the House.

Right now, according to reporting from The Hill, they are looking at a procedural vote starting tomorrow morning, Wednesday, here in Washington. Now, that procedural vote already is looking to be in jeopardy, as you indicated, because there are several House Republican lawmakers who are opposed to the Senate version of the bill, which has added votes.

and subtracted several things that the House did not pass when they considered this bill last week. So the opposition is not just coming then from the Democrats, but actually members of the GOP, the Republicans as well.

Yes, that's correct. You know, right now the Democrats are a united front. There isn't anyone who is considering crossing over to join the Republicans. The issue right now is with six or eight House Republicans right now who have differing issues with the bill. You have some Republican moderates who have issues with

the Medicaid provisions and the risk of people losing health insurance. There's some matters involving funding for rural hospitals. And then you have the conservatives, as you indicated, who have issues with

with the spending cuts in the bill and how much that will add to the national debt. Now, the Republicans can only afford to lose three votes in the chamber. And right now we're hearing from roughly about eight or 10 House Republicans who have indicated that they are not only going to vote for the bill, but they also may even stop the procedural vote that comes before that.

So the upshot of all this, and it's obviously pretty technical, I mean, it doesn't look likely it's going to get through and certainly not ahead of the date that Donald Trump wants it past, which, of course, Fourth of July, major event in the U.S. calendar. Well, anything is possible. You know, one minute in Washington can can change everything. So there's still a good amount of time for the House leadership to speak to those members who are opposed to the bill and

and give them something to negotiate on that they could possibly take back home and sell to their constituents. So this bill did not look like it was going to pass the Senate over the last three or four days until suddenly it did today. So this is very typical of how the House and Senate work. Things look like they're not going to pass until a half a day or a day passes by and suddenly –

They have just enough votes for it to squeak by. So you're not going to call it on this one, I'm guessing. Entirely reasonably, right? Not just yet. I don't know about July 4th. But even the president has given the lawmakers a little bit of wiggle room in terms of that being an exact date. And briefly, this does indicate that Donald Trump may be very successful in his own terms in the first few months of his presidency.

But when it comes to sorting out what goes on on Capitol Hill, he doesn't always get his way necessarily. I mean, I think with this one, I think this this bill has so much in it that it was just inevitable for this to be a quite a messy process. This is sort of messier than usual.

But, you know, there's a political component to this that people who are going to – Republicans who are opposing the bill are not going to run for re-election. And going up against the president still is sort of a political dead end for many of these lawmakers. So a little bit of a different dynamic there. Reema, thank you so much for filling us in on that. Reema Rahman there of TheWay.

Well, a group of fiscal conservative hawks have signalled their unhappiness, of course, about this bill and with how much the bill could add to the US national deficit. That's the difference between what the government spends and what it raises in revenue each year. Now, according to the right-wing House Freedom Caucus...

The Senate proposal, as it is now going to the House of Representatives, could add $650 billion to the deficit each year. If you want the numbers, the US national debt is currently $36.21 trillion.

And that's around 120, 124% of its GDP. Let's talk about this now with Bloomberg opinion columnist Clive Crook. Clive, thanks for being with us here on World Business Report. I mean, those numbers are pretty amazing, really. But is the deficit effective? Some people would suggest because the U.S. is the leading world economy and prints the dollar, after all, it's almost a technical issue that it has this huge deficit.

Well, I think we're testing the limits of that theory right now. It is true for sure that the U.S. has a much, much bigger borrowing capacity in relation to its GDP than other countries, partly because of the dollars standing in global financial markets and partly because the U.S. economy has a very impressive track record of growth.

But these debt numbers are pretty startling. And I think what's most important, my own view of it, is that the trajectory of future debt is so bad if this measure passes. We were already on a seriously bad debt trajectory, but this measure, if it passes in anything like its present form, will make that much worse. And I do think in due course,

Financial markets are going to look at these numbers and say, this just isn't going to work. And then the US will be in the kind of problem, facing the kind of problem that other countries from time to time, not least Britain recently, have faced.

when markets think that the debt numbers are out of control. Yeah, but they look, I mean, the people you're talking about look very often at this percentage of GDP. And I mean, it's a vast number, obviously, 36.21 trillion. It's between 120, 124% of GDP. Italy has a worse record on that front in terms of percentage. Britain's around about in the 90s percent. I mean, these are not absolutely way out there figures in terms of the normal way amongst, say, the G7 countries.

No, but I mean, I don't want to get too technical here, but first of all, you have to make a correction. That 120 something is the number that you should be looking at is public debt held

debt held by the public, which at the moment is about 100%, roughly speaking 100% for the US. And that is on a trajectory to rise something like to 130% by within 10 years. Now, as I say, it's the path that's the problem. If you say right now, at around 100% of GDP, the debt is affordable, and the financial markets certainly aren't panicking yet,

And that's one thing. I think that number is actually pretty disturbingly high because you've got to ask what happens to that number when we next encounter a recession. Right. It goes up. So that's a problem. You need the fiscal capacity to deal with a recession. But let's assume everything goes well and we stay at full employment.

this number is on a trajectory to just keep on rising as far as the eye can see. I mean, it is in that sense literally unsustainable. The only question is, when does this process come to an end? We'll see how it works out. Maybe if this bill passes, it certainly won't for the moment. Clive, thanks so much for being with us. Clive Crook there, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

Well, someone else who is exercised by the US debt and the size of it is Elon Musk. Now, he has been a harsh critic of this bill, largely because of what he says it will do to the debt. He described the bill, in fact, as insane, and he said that any member of Congress who voted for it should hang their heads in shame. Now, this is the man who was a supporter and assistant to Donald Trump only a couple of months ago, and he's now threatened to launch a new political party to campaign against.

the bill and its supporters. Well, in reply, the US President Donald Trump suggested that Doge, the government's cost-cutting agency Elon Musk actually set up, could now be turned against the world's richest man. We might have to put Doge on Elon. You know Doge? Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.

Well, there were other threats to Musk and his companies coming from Donald Trump, including the electric carmaker Tesla. Even suggestions Musk might be deported to South Africa. Tesla shares dropped up to 6% in response to some of what Donald Trump was saying. So could this be overall damaging for Tesla? I asked Cal Brower, an executive analyst at IC Cars.

Absolutely. Tesla will suffer financially from this bill because without the incentives to purchase EVs, their sales and their volume will go down dramatically.

And I'm sure that's a leading cause of why Elon is not a fan of the bill. And also, I guess, the fact that Donald Trump is clearly signaling that he's not very pleased with Elon Musk. Is there a risk that other things that the U.S. government could do might actually go against Tesla? I think one of the reasons Tesla stock went up so

after the election was because there was an assumption that Elon and Donald Trump were aligned and that Tesla would benefit in areas related to everything from autonomous driving regulation to government incentives. And I think now that it's looking almost like the opposite,

And that there could be a war brewing between the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man. And the world's most powerful man could leverage the government forces against Elon and Tesla. It's having the opposite effect, obviously, on a lot of people's assumption about Tesla's future. Yeah, we've already seen problems with shares, clearly, as you suggested. And...

How vulnerable is Tesla to all this? Because, I mean, it's a company that's been making a decent amount of money. It's been pretty popular up to now, although there have been issues, I suppose, about the popularity of Elon Musk and whether people will buy Teslas. But what is its financial health right now? Well, it's tough for Tesla because...

For the first 10 to 12 years that that company existed, really 15 years, they had almost no competition. They were a premium electric car maker in a world with no other premium electric cars. And now the reverse has happened. A lot of traditional automakers and a lot of pure electric car makers that have started out from scratch have entered the scene.

He has more competition than he's ever had. And more troubling is the competition from China, which seems to be able to do everything cheaper, faster, and better than a lot of the traditional car companies, including Tesla. So Tesla's revenue potential as an electric car maker has already kind of peaked by all indications. And he's now down to trying to get

autonomous driving and the robo taxi system to work. And a lot of people aren't necessarily convinced he can make that happen any faster than someone like Waymo or Zoox and some of the other players in Baidu in Japan or in China. Some of the other players out there look to be as far or further ahead than Tesla on the self-driving.

And the self-driving robo-taxis you talked about there, I mean, they're pretty dependent on state and federal regulation going the way they want. And if the federal government is inclined to, that could cause major problems. I think the assumption was that if he was aligned with Trump, Elon would have the ability to push his autonomous technology as fast or faster than any of the other brands.

And now, again, that the opposite looks like it's true. That could put a real damper on his ability to launch a robo-taxi. And that's really his best and almost last hope for increased revenue and profits and viability going forward.

and more proof that Tesla is facing increased competition, increased challenges in a market that seems to not be as friendly to EVs in the US and globally seems to be tilting more toward the Chinese alternatives. What about shareholders then? Because are they beginning to feel that perhaps Elon Musk isn't leading the company in the right direction if it's having this kind of effect? You know, we've seen a lot of whipsawing. There's just been a lot of turbulence with Elon in terms of his

Being in with Trump, being out with Trump, him being, you know, a fan of the Republican Party and then against the Republican Party. As an investor, you kind of want a solid, progressive, consistent forward movement. And I think a lot of investors are feeling increasingly that that's not what they're going to be getting from Tesla and Elon. And that was Carl Brouwer there.

Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility. There

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.

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No. Yes. SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn more at Concur.com. You're listening to the World Business Report from the BBC World Service. Let's have a look at what's been happening on the share markets. I'm joined now by Kuei Nguyen, who is Partner-in-Chief Investment Officer of Equity Strategies Research Affiliates, who's on the line from New York. Kuei, thanks for being with us. I mean, just referring back to what we were talking about there. Tesla's shares did take a bit of a drop, didn't they?

Oh, yes, they did. But to be fair, they closed up a lot higher than they first dropped in the morning. Some of that, I think, is really down to, yes, the EV tax credit in the mega bill doesn't look promising for Tesla. They have a lot of structural challenges, but some of the taxes on imported parts from China are

in the renewable sector got axed. So it's a little bit of a balance for Tesla. But again, I think they are facing some significant challenges going forward. Yeah, indeed. Well, let's talk about perhaps the US economy, which is very much the background, I suppose, to this bill and the effect it might have. And of course, Donald Trump's been putting a lot of pressure on the Fed to

lower interest rates not got very far so far. Though, interestingly, one of the senior Fed members, Christopher Waller, is saying that the Fed should lower rates sooner rather than later. But let's hear from the man who actually runs that pretty much at the moment, which is Jerome Powell, the Fed boss. He's been speaking at a summit hosted by the European Central Bank in Sintra, Portugal. And he was asked again about cuts to interest rates. Chair, would the Fed have cut more by now if it weren't for the tariffs?

So I do think that's right. In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and where essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs. And that was Jerome Powell, of course, referring there, Quay, to interest rates, to inflation and also to the tariffs. I mean, these are lots of things playing on the US economy. What's the feeling about what the direction of the Fed is and how much pressure it feels under from Donald Trump?

Oh, I think that people are saying that the Fed is under significant pressure. I mean, Trump is already making noises about vetting candidates to replace Powell. And so those who are on the short list, they're all trying to say things that are friendly, you know, or friendly to the administration. And that in some ways puts Powell under even more scrutiny. Having said that, I mean, I think that it's fair to say that

What Powell does here, it's very, very tricky. I think one of the things that we do see is that prices are sticky. You know, the inflation rate stays above 2%. At the same time, you see a very gradual softening of the economy. So how the Fed tries to balance that can be a very tricky situation. It's going to be interesting to see how it works through. Great. Thanks so much for being with us here on World Business Report.

Now, one of the biggest complaints for online content providers is that what they produce is constantly being copied and stolen by artificial intelligence bots. These are known as crawlers, and they scour the web for data, which they use without authorization for operating and training AI systems. Well, now there is a bit of an answer to this, a system that blocks these AI bots.

And it's been introduced by Cloudflare, a leading internet infrastructure firm. Well, I asked Cloudflare's co-founder and CEO, Matthew Price, how it worked.

About 20% of the web already sits behind us. And so if you want to access that 20% of the web, you have to pass through us. In that sense, we can then be a bouncer. Oftentimes that's to stop things like Chinese hackers, Iranian hackers, Russian hackers. But increasingly, what our media company partners and customers want is to make sure that we can also make sure that AI bots that are taking their content and not compensating them for it are stopped at the door and not allowed to have that.

content. So that's what we announced we were doing by default, and it's been extremely well received across the content creator universe. Now, you say by default, so that it applies to all sites that use Cloudflare? Is that what happens? That's

That's correct. And so it applies on pages that have some indication that there's an intent to monetize them. So if they have an advertisement on them, if they're behind a paywall, then by default, we will block that. Now, a publisher, if they decide they want to allow AI bots, they can obviously turn that off and allow them in. But we believe that having now worked with publishers all the way from advertisers

I mean, there are certainly some sites that are happy for content to be taken. Access, I guess, to search engines like Google actually helps them. So is what you're developing going to prevent that?

Absolutely not. And again, we've been very careful to make sure that we are only blocking those pages that either a site owner has told us to, or that has some indication that is being monetized. AI bots don't click on ads. And so if they are taking your content, uh,

from an ad-generated page, what it means is that it's less likely that a human will see that page because it's more likely that we will read the derivative rather than that original. Okay, now you said that you've been asked about this. Are you actually doing this because you're coming under pressure from big news websites to do this? Is that why you're responding? I

I think we're doing what our customers ask us to do. And so I don't think it's that we were coming under pressure, but instead that as we talked to people who are in the content creation space, they said that this was one of the biggest threats that they were facing, where more and more of their content was being taken and they weren't being compensated for it in any way. And then that meant that when people would interact with AIs,

Now, you've tried to tackle this, I believe, in the past with a situation where you'd send the worst crawlers, I suppose, these AI crawlers, into a kind of labyrinth of web pages filled with junk.

that didn't really work, I guess. No, I think that worked great. But what this is saying is even the best crawlers that are out there are taking content without actually compensating the creators. And so we've got to change the model. And that means, yes, absolutely, we should waste the time.

of the worst crawlers that are there, but we should allow the best crawlers to actually pay for the content that they're using. That content is the fuel that runs the AI economy. And when we've talked to the AI companies, they all recognize that they need to pay content providers. What was hard was, uh,

That had been done previously in these one-off deals where OpenAI or others would pay one content provider, but then the content provider would just give their content away for free to everyone else. That didn't make anyone feel good. And so what we're doing is we're saying you should still make those deals. You should still get paid deals.

by the AI companies. But for those who don't pay for your content, you shouldn't give them access. And we think that that actually is encouraging a much healthier ecosystem among even the responsible AI companies. Matthew Prince there. Now, it's 25 years since one of the world's first and longest transnational bridges was opened. But as the Orison Bridge marks its quarter century between Denmark and Sweden, it's facing new challenges, as Maddy Savage reports.

Central Copenhagen is a blend of 17th century brightly coloured townhouses and edgy bars and fashion boutiques. But I'm here to visit IO Interactive, a Danish gaming company. It's known for creating the globally popular Hitman franchise and is currently working on a new James Bond game. I don't think we've had the pleasure...

Something I've been doing a lot recently is looking at the reaction videos of our launch trailer. That's Sandra Mondahl, who lives in Malmö, Sweden's third largest city, but commutes over the Öresund Bridge to the company's headquarters in Copenhagen several times a month. It takes me about an hour door to door because of the infrastructure with the bridge and the trains, and it's super easy. Driving across can take less than 15 minutes. It's around 10 miles long, including a tunnel section.

I find it magnificent. Let me tell you a bit more about the bridge's history as I make my way over to the other side in Malmo.

It opened at the turn of the millennium, costing more than $4 billion at the time, with the goal of increasing travel, trade and networking in the region. New figures released by Öresund Institutet, an independent research organisation, suggest cross-border commuting has increased by more than 400% since then. And there's been a big jump in the number of Danes and Swedes starting businesses on either side of the water. Next, Desmond Centre.

A short walk from the train station is Malmo University's Urban Studies Department, where Helena Bormann is an associate professor. Once you open up the connection, companies can share input markets, customer markets. Finding specialised, skilled staff is easier. Malmo has experienced a surge in new tech start-ups and life science companies.

and more than 100 businesses have moved headquarters or specialist offices here to benefit from the region's infrastructure. But I also think for people living on one side of the border and working on the other side, there's a lot of administration involved, you know, taxes, not having to pay double taxes and so on. Another challenge is punctuality.

Helena says major disruptions linked to border controls and reduced services during the pandemic eroded trust amongst some commuters. But a recent study by Swedish public service broadcaster SVT suggests around 90% of commuter trains are now punctual and record numbers of people are using them. The current challenge is that travelling by train between Denmark and Sweden is a success. So the trains is crowded. That's Johan Vessman, CEO of the Öresunds Institutet research organisation.

He says a new generation of faster trains with larger capacities are on the way, though. But it will be established about in five, six, seven years in the future. So until then...

you still will have crowded trains. Despite facing challenges, the Öresund Bridge remains a European icon for cross-border collaboration. And Swedish and Danish authorities are discussing boosting this even further with new fixed connections, including a road and rail tunnel and even a subway between the two Nordic countries. Maddy Savage there reporting from Copenhagen on the Öresund Bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden. And

And a member of my family ran a marathon across it just a couple of weeks ago. So it's good for foot as well as rail and road. Anyway, that's pretty much it from this edition of World Business Report. Thanks for listening from me and the rest of the team. Bye-bye.

Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility. They're

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.