US pauses student visas

0:05Hello and welcome to Business Matters. I'm Rahul Tandon on the programme today. A partnership between Japan's Nippon Steel and US Steel gets the green light. The mayor of one steel town, Wes Mifflin in Pennsylvania, has been telling me why he thinks that is good news. Texas brings in online child safety laws. Apple's boss, Tim Cook, isn't happy. We'll find out why. And how easy is it to be patriotic and only buy goods made in your country? Quite difficult, it seems. And I said, well, if I'm going to be working with manufacturers, the least I can do is support them by buying things made in USA.

0:38So I said, I'm going to buy everything made in the US. And I had to quickly backtrack on that one. More on that to come. It is another particularly busy few hours, lots of different news stories coming in. To guide us through it all, we have Erin McLaughlin, Senior Economist at the Conference Board in New York. How are you, Erin? I'm good. Thank you for having me. Well, we are delighted you're with us. And while you're with us, let's start a consumer sentiment, something I know you guys look at. We've had some figures out in the US. What's that telling us? How are people feeling? Well, it's very interesting.

1:11So today the conference board released its consumer confidence index, which we're very well known for. And this was the first time in after five months of declines that consumer confidence went up. And it's very interesting because evidently it was because the administration struck a deal with China. So it's kind of like after all of the dismal sort of talk of tariffs, even though we still have these tariffs in place globally, coming down from 145 % and just having some advancement made the index go up for this reading. Well, there we go. People feeling a bit better about life. Somebody's always pretty positive about life.

1:56Simon Littlewood, founder of the Raffles Crew of Singapore-based business network, joins us. How are you, Simon? In good spirits? Yeah, I'm in good spirits. It's a lovely, lovely sunny morning in Singapore. I'm delighted to be talking to you. Both blessings. Well, there we go. Indeed. You know, we talked about what was happening there in the U.S. with consumer sentiment. Quite a lot going on in Asia. ASEAN, you know, that group of countries have been meeting. And once again, I suppose they look at China and the U.S. and wonder, do they have to choose? Do they, Simon? Well, I think that, you know, it's very difficult for the smaller countries in Southeast Asia who clearly have to kind of balance the tightrope between China and the U.S.

2:36But, you know, generally, when you tune out all the noise, we're expecting growth of between 4 % and 5 % this year across most of Asia, including north of 4 % in Singapore. So there's every reason to be positive. Yep, that's always good. You know, I saw a headline. It made me think of you, Simon. It said, rich and naive. I know you're one of those. Why Singapore is engulfed in a scandemic. I hope you've been safe. Yeah. Yeah, I have. I mean, Singaporeans, bless them, who grow up in a rather protected environment where the government, you know, the government, for example, controls the Internet by proxy servers.

3:09So nothing can get through that they don't approve of. It means that if you're overprotected, you're very, very vulnerable when you go somewhere else where you're meeting, you know, crooks and fraudsters. So Singaporeans are famously vulnerable to all that kind of stuff. And indeed, I know a couple of quite smart Singaporeans who've lost a bundle. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Well, there we go. We started with positivity and now we're moving into some negativity. Well, we're glad to know that nobody has managed to scam us, Simon. Right. The Trump administration has told American embassies all over the world to stop interviewing foreign students who want to study in the U.S.

3:43New rules are being prepared, which will mean the social media accounts of all international students will be vetted to make sure they don't support terror groups. Here's the U.S. Department of State spokesperson, Tammy Bruce. Whoever you are, we're going to be looking at you. It seems to be such a controversial thing that's going on, but it shouldn't be. And every nation should take seriously and does who's coming in. So if you're going to be applying for a visa, follow the normal process, expect to be looked at, and we go on from there. Now, let's give you some numbers. More than a million foreigners study at American universities, and the Association of International Educators say they contribute more than$40 billion to that U.S.

4:23economy. Arne Duncan is a former U.S. Education Secretary who served under President Obama. He's now a senior fellow at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. If you attack foreign students, it deprives our country, the best and brightest, people who can help us innovate, people who can help us find a cure for cancer, people can build new businesses and create jobs. This only hurts us. As a former education secretary, can I just talk to you about timing here? A lot of students from abroad would have places for next year. Would they be in the middle of that visa process now? I assume so.

4:57My strong hope is that there'll be some court injunction coming very quickly behind this because it is so illegal. But yes, people, whether they're new students, whether they're returning students. It's obviously for us, you know, people just leaving schools now, summer holidays. My son just came home from college about a week ago. And, you know, people be making their plans to return in the fall. And we've never seen anything like this in the history of our country. So it's deeply unsettling, troubling. But it might only be something very temporary. You know, he's talked about expanding social media vetting of people who are coming into the country.

5:34That may not take a long period of time. that may not be a bad idea either. I actually think it's all a terrible idea and we've always been the nation of opportunity. But you have to check who's coming in. I mean, that is something that's always happened. That's not what his agenda is. His agenda is much more insidious than that. You always have to look at, you know, not lose the force for the trees. And what we're seeing is like an unprecedented series of attacks on the rule of law, on journalism, on freedom of speech, and now on universities. and the goal is to create maximum fear. Well, there will be those in the Trump administration and Republicans who would disagree with that.

6:11Can I talk to you about the damage that this could do to the U.S. education system? Because it has, as you said, brought in the brightest from all over the world. Do you think many students across the world will now look at the U.S. and wonder whether it's worth coming? Well, it's not only a chilling effect for students coming from overseas. You're seeing more and more American, you know, born and bred students It's choosing to go to college overseas, go to Canada, go to Europe, go to Australia, go to the UK, wherever it might be. And so it just leads to a brain drain. But Trump and his administration is just very threatened by higher education in general.

6:46They see places of higher education, places where people can think critically and think for themselves and think independently. So this is part of a broader attack at higher education in general. What they've done with Harvard University in particular recently is, you know, just again, beyond mind boggling. It's completely illegal. And so this is, again, I want people to understand, your listeners to understand the context in which this is happening and what his real end goal is. And it will have a serious financial impact if this continues on universities, because almost 6 % of U.S. students come from abroad.

7:23It's an important sense of revenue as well for universities. It is an important sense of revenue. That's real. But for me, that's I don't say it's minor, but for me, that's much less important than the brain drain. And our system of higher education is far from perfect and you're always trying to get better. But I think I can say honestly that it is the best system of higher education in the world. And it has attracted talent from all over the world, you know, for centuries, not for decades, for centuries. And that talent coming here benefits the world, benefits us globally, but it absolutely disproportionately helps us here in the United States.

8:01We have that kind of talent coming in who can create, who can innovate, who can drive medical breakthroughs and technological breakthroughs. That's what makes America strong. And his slogan, Make America Great Again, he's doing exactly the opposite, exactly the opposite. But a final point to you. Even Harvard has said, look, they've had problems on campus that needs to be addressed. Those problems you would accept need to be addressed, but not in this way. No, absolutely. Harvard is an amazing institution. It has never been perfect and it never will be perfect. And every institution needs to, every university, everyone's trying to get better.

8:38Every high school, every elementary school, perfection is not the goal. It's getting better. But what he's done to challenge Harvard, he is scared of a place like Harvard. And so, yes, every university, including Harvard, has many areas in which they need to get better, 100 percent. But to take away hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in medical research, try and go after individual foreign students, no president in America's history has ever done this. Harvard's been around much longer than the presidency here in the United States. and it's a real challenge. Fascinating to hear the views there of the former U.S.

9:20Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Aaron, we're still sort of getting more details on how long this pause may be. Could be a long time, could be a short time, but we know that there's been a lot of debate around the U.S. education system. Do you think people outside may look at this now and, you know, we started that discussion there. Wonder about whether the U.S. is the place to come to? I do think folks will wonder that. I think that if the whole conversation is around freedom of expression and freedom of speech, and when one is a student, whether undergraduate or graduate, that is a time for thoughts to be tested and debated with peers, with professors, and with academia.

10:05And so those are the tenets that have made U.S. universities so impressive and so attractive globally. And certainly, you know, anecdotally, I've heard from some of my colleagues who are associate professors that some of the students are very that are international are also very cautious to even return home or to not have jobs over this summer period if they're already in the U.S. And so sort of like the business environment, it's just creating another level of uncertainty that's affecting all sorts of different stakeholders. Simon, I saw something interesting. You know, Asian universities are moving quickly.

10:46The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has offered unconditional admission to displaced Harvard students. University of Tokyo has said they were considering displaced students as well. Singapore's got a great education system, haven't you? One of the best universities in Asia there. Do you think they could benefit? Singapore has two of the world's top 20 universities. So Singapore has done really very well. I mean, let's just, because I really disagree profoundly with what you're interlocute. I had to say that you won't be surprised here. But if we just take a step back a bit and take the politics out of it, if you wanted to get into a Singapore university, you can expect to be subject to the kind of scrutiny which the Trump administration is trying to ensure occurs in the US as a matter of routine.

11:32You know, there is concern about your political affiliations. There's concern about your finances and a whole range of other things. And it's done in a quiet, gentle, loving way. And it's not proclaimed, but that's the reality. Because Singapore, like many nations in Southeast Asia, are, you know, they don't, it's not long since there was chaos in Southeast Asia. And they, it's in living memory, you know, race riots and so on and so forth. So people here are quite happy to accept a level of security. You know, I think what's going on in the US is that the universities do not anymore. They're no longer the custodians of free speech.

12:07They're no longer the custodians of open debate. I certainly don't accept that. Well, I think they should. I mean, I enjoyed going to, you know, I've got to balance this a little bit because, you know, when I was at a well-known UK university, we occupied the university administration, a whole bunch of us. Which one was it? Come on, tell us. It was Oxford to protest the Vietnam War. and we were all ejected by a combination of the police force and college proctors. You know, I mean, it was good fun. So, I mean, if we didn't have social media, I don't know. I'm just trying to think as you serve this article up, how they would have found out that we had insidious left-wing views and there wasn't any way unless they'd opened our mail or tapped our phones, they wouldn't have known what we were up to.

12:49I mean, it's all a bit out in the open now. Well, it is, yeah, but I'd like to go back to some of those people because those views have changed over time a little bit, haven't they, Simon? To be frank, as most people have, Aaron, it is part of the world that we live in now we leave a trail don't we with social media so is it unfair for government to say hey well hang on a minute if you're going to come in let me have a quick look and see some of the things that you've been posting well i think that goes back to are we discussing freedom of expression and freedom of political thought or are we really in fear of sort of acts of terrorism right and so and also who is sort of evaluating this.

13:26It's a little, the reports are a little bit light on details. You know, how are folks that are trained within our embassies and within our Department of State, how are they going to evaluate a student's Facebook page or Instagram or, you know, Twitter X tweets? And how do they make these judgment calls that will impact one individual's life so profoundly, especially if that individual has already started studies in the US. And so, you know, I think that's where we really have to be careful between, you know, what is a hazard and what is, you know, freedom of thought and freedom of political speech.

14:07Yep. Let us see how this story continues to develop. And lots of students all over the world, I know people I know in India whose kids heading off to the US because they're in that period where they've had offers. Many of them would be within the visa process at this point of time. We'll be looking for clarification, which, of course, when it comes, we will bring it to you here on the BBC World Service. We're going to stay on that sort of theme of social media now because Texas has passed a new law requiring Apple and Google to verify the age of their users on the app stores. Starting next year, anyone under 18 will need a parent's approval to download apps or make in-app purchases.

14:43Apple and Google have opposed the bill, but social media platforms such as Meta, X and Snap have welcomed it alongside child online safety groups. Let's bring in a familiar voice on the program, our tech correspondent, Lily Jamali. So firstly, I mean, is this the first state in the U.S. to sort of pass this sort of law? Have others done it or others considering it? The second state in the U.S. to do this, but it is definitely the largest one. The first to kind of pioneer this is Utah, which is another conservative state. But Texas has the largest, the second largest population of any state in the nation.

15:19So we expect more impact from this law and could also ratchet up pressure on federal lawmakers to make sure that they get federal legislation of this ilk passed in Washington. Now, there have been reports, haven't there, that Tim Cook, who runs Apple, called up the governor of Texas to say, look, don't do this. Why are companies like Apple and Google so opposed to this? Well, it's bad for their business model for one thing, but the reporting that you just mentioned, I'll mention, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal and we have asked Apple about it. They are not commenting on that at this time.

15:58But, you know, without a doubt, this Apple will say, and they actually did say in a statement today that they share the goal of wanting to protect these younger users and the way that they use this technology. But they don't agree with the method. So I think all of us generally want kids online safety, but they are concerned about how this might affect the privacy of those younger users. You know, sometimes I hear the example of kids, for example, in the LGBT community where the social media platforms that they have access to online, especially if they live in perhaps a more conservative place, can create community for them.

16:39And so we often hear that privacy argument. If they, for example, have to share that with parents or other relatives who don't agree with that lifestyle, that can put them in danger. A question that many people will probably want answered is, OK, so you're in Texas and this has now come into place. How does your phone know you're in Texas? Yeah, that is a really good question. And we should actually do some reporting on the mechanics of this. This, you know, when you look at legislation in the U.S., Texas has done things that are passed in their territory, but do affect people across the country.

17:19And another great example of this is abortion. So that's not a tech story, but they have very stringent abortion laws there now. And as we have watched that story unfold over the last two to three years where they passed this very specific law that restricts how people can access abortion care in Texas, there have been ramifications for doctors in other states. There have been ramifications certainly for the women who seek that treatment. And I think what we'll see here is a lot of those questions will be unanswered when this actually takes effect January 1st. And then we also are going to get some answers as Utah's law comes into effect.

17:56It's actually, I believe, in effect now. It's kind of on a quicker timeline. So we will have some answers there. It'll be interesting to look at how that's working. I'm sure that'll be something that you'll be looking at. Lily, stay with us. I want to bring in our guests here. I mean, it seems eminently sensible, doesn't it? That, you know, there should be some sort of limits put in place on what kids can download, and the companies should be responsible for that. The ills of excessive use of devices, including social media, are really very well known. There's no question. Young and impressionable minds can clearly be affected.

18:34Plus, it's not healthy to spend hours and hours and hours every day with your face buried in a device. And it's very important that the role of the parent is front and centre when it comes to managing what devices kids have and what access they have to them. Yeah, that's true, but it's not – I mean, we all know as parents, it's not easy to do that, is it? I mean, so the companies have to have some responsibility, don't they? I think it's – well, I think the companies do, but at the end of the day, you know, as was quite accurately said a minute ago, the companies just want to make money. So they might make the right noises.

19:08But at the end of the day, kids spend a fortune, particularly kids who are spending their parents' dollar and don't really mind what they spend. They are very lucrative markets. So parents have to take responsibility. They have to have the ability to get involved in what their kids consume, whether it's at school, whether it's on their devices. These are just common sense ideas. On this very program, I've talked about how when my kids were younger and they had their devices, I would make them put their devices away for family occasions. they'd be given to a monitor, everybody had to talk. And initially there was resentment, then there was engagement.

19:41It's possible to be an effective parent. It's not that hard. I wonder about it. Honestly, as a parent myself, I'm a pretty ineffective parent. I think if you speak to my children, it's probably what they'd say to you. But it is, I think, on a personal level, probably, what do you think about this, Erin? I don't know if you have kids. I hope you don't mind me asking you that question. But it does. It's not as easy as it used to be, I think. So this idea that, yeah, we should all do better when it comes to social media as parents. We need some help sometimes, don't we, from the companies, from regulation?

20:16Yes. I mean, I do not have children. I have lots of friends with children. And it's very interesting. But, you know, I can barely figure out my iPhone some days. I just got a new iPhone. I have to authenticate every single step. But it was in the news here in the U.S., I don't know if it made it around the world, that a second grader in Kentucky accidentally ordered 70 ,000 lollipops that Amazon delivered to his mom's doorstep. And it cost thousands of dollars. And it became a sensation because there's so many ways. You know, forget when you sort of just put the content discussion aside. There is so many ways to, I guess, order from basically just speaking into the air, which is what he did.

21:02And Alexa brought, you know, thousands of dollars worth of lollipops to the door. So I, you know, there's got to be some responsibility, you know, on all sides for sort of making sure that that doesn't happen. Well, listen, you know what we're going to do to help with your eyes? We'll give you Lily's number. If you have any problems, you know, as our tech correspondent, Lily will be, I'm sure, able to help you with all of them. But it comes and this discussion has been fascinating because it comes to that crunch issue, doesn't it, Lily, about, you know, whose responsibility is it? And does that mean you need the federal authorities, like in the case of Texas, to say, look, we're going to have to put in regulation, which is something the tech companies and, you know, Donald Trump doesn't like?

21:43Yeah. And the tech companies, make no mistake, are battling among themselves about whose responsibility this is. And that's why you're seeing certain companies, Snapchat among them, supporting this kind of legislation, because it puts that onus of checking age on the people who run the app store, not the people who run the app itself. And I think that's really important. Just a few quick comments. The lollipop story, absolutely delightful. I know it's not exactly what most parents would want. But the other thing I'll quickly mention is just when you talk to lawmakers and regulators about this issue, you almost always will hear them invoke their own children and how hard it is to keep track of the lives that they lead online.

22:27You know, it's one thing to know physically where they are, but they are having this experience online that is totally sometimes in the dark for these parents. And that's why they want to do something about it. Lily, it's always a pleasure having you on the programme. I have to say if thousands of lollipops appeared at my door, I would be angry at the cost. But, you know, I would eventually get through most of them. Right, we will be back with the second half of Business Matters very shortly.

23:03Welcome back to Business Matters here on the BBC World Service. Simon Littlewood, founder of the Raffles Crew, a Singapore-based business network, is with us, as is Erin McLaughlin, senior economist at the conference board in New York. Erin told us the fascinating story of the eight-year-old boy who ordered 70 ,000 dum-dum lollipops by mistake. Or maybe not, Erin, because I'm just reading here that eight-year-old Liam said that he wanted to host a carnival for his friends and distribute the candy as prizes. Well, I think, Erin, he's got a lot of friends there, to be honest with you. He must, he must, or he certainly does now.

23:39He certainly does. Now, interesting conversation that probably took place between him and his mother. Right, let us kick off the second half of the programme by talking about steel. And before we go into this story, just a quick question to both of you, Simon first and then Erin, if you want to pick up. Steel is very important, isn't it? I think just for countries' national identity, you know, even those often countries may have this industry struggling, I mean, they still want to have their own steel industry, a lot of them, don't they, Simon? Historians have measured the economic importance of countries going back centuries by their steel production on the premise that you have to produce steel to have a modern world.

24:19And, for example, they'll commonly say Chinese steel production was the world's largest until the 1820s. And then the UK took over, and that was the moment at which Western culture sort of lent over Chinese culture. And now China has reasserted itself. So, yeah, there is an importance to the manufacture of steel. Whether that's still quite as true in the digital age, I don't know. And Erin, when you talk about consumer sentiment in parts of the US, in that rust spell in particular, this is a really important issue in terms of how people feel when they look at whether that industry is there or not anymore.

24:53It has. I mean, the capital of steel in America is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania is a critical, large swing state that Donald Trump won. So that's important to sort of keep in mind. But Pittsburgh itself has diversified, you know, even though their football, our football team is called the Steelers. So, you know, steel is important because it really is a physical embodiment of the built environment, of bridges, of railway, of skyscrapers, you know, and both infrastructure is also critical for national security. So it certainly is a material that is top of mind. It's also been one of the sectoral tariffs, steel and aluminum, that have a 25 % tariff and have gotten a lot of attention.