Taking Stock: Is Trump happier with NATO on defence spending?

**Will Bain** (0:03)
Hello, and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service, where today we're taking stock of a week of presidential video review.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:10)
I asked for a review because I didn't think it was a foul.
And again, I'm good at this stuff. I didn't think it was a foul. I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into each other and got entangled. That was not a guy punching somebody in the face or anything that would be different.

**Will Bain** (0:26)
Expert, referee, it turns out, and president of the US, Donald Trump. Well, following FIFA's decision to rescind that red card for star striker Folloran Baligan, the US promptly crashed out of their own World Cup, losing 4-1 to Belgium.

**Seijiro Takeshita** (0:38)
I do think the controversy played a big part. I think maybe we could have done better if he still kept the red card. Like a little politics got into it and it just didn't help the team at all.

**Mark Rutte** (0:47)
They should have just kept them off. They brought him on.

**Seijiro Takeshita** (0:50)
The pressure was on him and he couldn't do any work.

**Will Bain** (0:53)
Unhappy fans, controversy, hopefully we're free of those two things with our panel today and no bans needed to be overturned to get them back alongside us as well. Seijiro Takeshita, Professor of Management and Information at the University of Shizuoka is with us alongside Yael Selfin, Chief Economist at the global professional services firm KPMG, joining us from the UK. Seijiro, I can't imagine you've ever been banned from anything, sports, bars, anything like that. You had to fight to overturn a ban anywhere?

**Seijiro Takeshita** (1:23)
Well, no, I didn't get any ban, but I've been playing rugby. So yes, I have had some very, very, I should say, rough moments, but however rough it is, I've never had the experience of external factors, like political issues, intervening on decision. It doesn't matter where this is red card or yellow card, blue card or green card, in my opinion, it's the fact that there's been intervention, which spoils everything, I think, in my opinion.

**Will Bain** (1:49)
Yeah, you're much more used to dealing with politicians intervening in your work, I think, but ever been banned or fought to overturn your ban to get back out there again?

**Seijiro Takeshita** (1:58)
Yeah, well, there has been a small steps, but in Japan, it never comes direct, it comes indirect from somebody subordinates of the person who wants to turn things around. So it's a very complicated and much more of, I should say, layers that you find in the class societal system. We don't have a real strong class system like in the UK, but that said, the political motives and the methodology they try to adopt their way is quite cunning, to say the least.

**Will Bain** (2:27)
Yael, you're much more used to kind of that politics rubbing up against your work, but ever had to fight to get a ban overturned yourself in one way or another?

**Yael Selfin** (2:35)
Well, I think, you know, especially when you're working in professional services and you represent the firm in some ways, you have to be a little bit careful. Then also I speak to a lot of clients and you want to convey certain things, but you also need to be mindful of their own, if you like, professional interests, etc. So I have found that I do need to be a bit careful sometimes while trying to convey exactly what the trends are. But what I find fascinating with all of it is that it's actually the online world can actually impact the real world. You don't actually need to be there. You could almost play remotely online, be part of the game.

**Will Bain** (3:17)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, hopefully plenty of room for candor here on the programme today. We won't be interfering at all in your opinions, I hope, as we go. We're taking stock. We're going to be looking at all those decisions shaping the global economy this week, from government spending on defence at the NATO Summit to changing economies. Well, economies under pressure in both the UK and Japan. That's taking stock from Business Daily. Let's dive into our first topic. Then President Trump says the ceasefire in Iran is now over, blasting in extraordinary language, possibly the regime in Tehran as scum, among other verbal exchanges before relaunching those airstrikes. Speaking at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, he described the Iranian authorities as violent, saying he didn't want to engage with them anymore.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:58)
As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I don't care. They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. They're a bunch of lying guys. My whole life, that's all I do is deals.