Deep Dive
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Japanese car giant Nissan slashes thousands of jobs after dismal results. Good morning. You are listening to the Marketplace Morning Report and we're live from the BBC World Service. I'm Leanna Byrne.
So Nissan is slashing 20,000 jobs worldwide and shutting seven factories as it struggles with plunging sales, especially in China and the US. It's a dramatic move from its new boss, Ivan Espinoza, who took charge last month. Here he is speaking at a press conference a short time ago. Our full year financial results are a wake-up call. The reality is clear. We have a very high cost structure.
To complicate matters further, the global market environment is volatile and unpredictable, making planning and investment increasingly challenging. Hence,
Nissan must prioritise self-improvement with greater urgency and speed. Now, Nissan is already deep in the red, losing $4.5 billion last year. So what's gone wrong? The BBC's Theo Leggett has been following this one. Hi, Theo. Hello, Leanna. So those are eye-watering numbers. 20,000 jobs, that's 15% of the company. How did Nissan end up in such a deep hole? Well,
Arguably, in the last decade, Nissan took its eye off the ball. It seemed to be more focused on corporate bloodletting, ousting its once-celebrity chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, trying to extricate itself from a complex relationship with a French manufacturer, Renault, and basically didn't build the right kind of cars at the right time. So that brings us to where we are now, where it's two biggest markets. It's got problems.
In the United States, it basically hasn't built enough hybrids that people want to buy. So sales there have been struggling. And then in China, which is its biggest market, it hasn't made enough electric vehicles. And it's been overtaken by domestic players who've invested very heavily in high-tech electric technologies. The end result is that the company has been losing a lot of money. Its headline loss for last year was $4.5 billion.
And it's having to cut costs. And that includes cutting back on staff. So 20,000 staff to go and seven out of 17 factories to shut. We don't know which factories are going to close yet. Now, Ivan Espinosa, he's only been CEO for six weeks. So what radical reset is he promising?
Well, I think this is it. We had the announcement last year that Nissan would be cutting back considerably, getting rid of 9,000 jobs. He said no more radical surgery is needed. I think this is Mr Espinosa coming in and making his mark on the company, saying we are going for a reset, we are going to cut costs, and we are now going to invest in products that people actually want to buy. At the same time, of course, he's facing a big headache, which is uncertainty over the tariffs.
introduced by the administration of Donald Trump in the United States. At the moment, for automobiles, those stand at 25%. That's a big extra cost for Nissan. All right. The BBC's Theo Leggett. Thanks for joining us in Marketplace. It's a pleasure. OK, let's do the numbers. ♪
Chinese shares edged slightly higher today after an initial boost from the U.S.-China tariff truce gave way to investor caution about how long peace might last. Meanwhile, Japanese tech giant SoftBank announced strong annual profits of nearly $8 billion, its first full-year profit in four years driven by big bets on artificial intelligence.
Now, if you've ever ordered clothes or gadgets online from China, this next story might just save you some cash. President Trump has cut tariffs on small packages sent from China and Hong Kong into the U.S., dropping them from 120% down to 54%.
The move comes just hours after America and China agreed to pause their trade battle and restart talks. This is big news for Chinese retailers like Shein and Timu, as the BBC's Mariko Oi explains. It is a huge cut, but it is important to remember that those Chinese online retail giants like Shein and Timu, they had previously enjoyed the exemption of any import tax.
So they could actually ship low-value items below US$800 directly to customers in the United States. But Mr Trump closed that rule and that prompted Timu, for example, to stop selling goods directly from China to the United States. And also Shein has high prices. What we don't know is whether or not this latest announcement means that those companies will change their strategies. Though, of course, 54% is still much higher than what they used to enjoy.
Mariko Oi reporting and speaking of China, Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged Latin America and Caribbean leaders to stand united against what he described as global bullying. At a summit in Beijing, the countries are working to strengthen their ties amid uncertainty triggered by President Trump's unpredictable trade policy. The BBC's Maura Fogarty reports.
He has some sharp words for the U.S. He said there are no winners in tariff wars. He also said bullying or hegemonism only leads to self-isolation. So again, no guesses as to who he's referring to. But it is part of President Xi's strategy to become less dependent on trade with the United States, looking for new trading partners and investment partners around.
around the world. And he sees Latin America and the Caribbean countries as a key part of that. Maura Fogarty there. Now, Africa's debt crisis is in focus today as leaders meet in Togo to tackle rising repayments and soaring interest rates. Kenya's financial pressures have become a particular
worry, with the IMF currently assessing its debt burden. For more, here's Nairobi-based economic analyst Ali Khan-Sachu. Clearly, if you're spending 80 cents of each dollar you're raising on servicing debt, you're very near the line, as it were. And I think Kenya escaped crossing that line because of tremendous support from the IMF
and the World Bank under the Biden administration, where the Biden administration was looking for support from African countries. And the challenge for the Kenyan government was that
Some of the conditionalities that the IMF was attaching to the lending was raising taxes. Raising taxes became very unpopular. So the government has now made the decision that it's not prepared to raise taxes because, you know, most governments want to stay in power. They don't fancy being chucked out. Ali Khan Sattu there, and I'm Leanna Byrne with the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.
Can we invest our way out of the climate crisis? Five years ago, it seemed like Wall Street was working on it until a backlash upended everything. So there's a lot of alignment between the dark money right and the oil industry on this effort. I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive, a podcast from Marketplace. In this season, we investigate the rise, fall, and reincarnation of climate-conscious investing.
Listen to How We Survive wherever you get your podcasts.