Power Lunch - Wall St. awaits Powell speech, retail earnings; Trump and Zelenskyy meet with European leaders 8/18/25

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Stocks dipped on Monday, as markets cooled off following a winning week. Traders awaited key retail earnings and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s annual speech at the central bank’s Jackson Hole summit.And President Donald Trump is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House today. We’ll tell you all you need to know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to a critical and possibly slightly chaotic Monday for the markets and your money. Right now, leaders of five European nations, Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, and the heads of the EU and NATO are all at the White House. They are discussing options for a possible future peace deal that would end Russia's aggressive war in Ukraine. This comes off President Trump's meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska as all sides angle for negotiating leverage. moments ago, President Trump saying this. We're going to work with Ukraine. We're going to work with everybody, and we're going to make sure that if there's peace,

the peace is going to stay long term. This is very long term. We're not talking about a two-year piece, and then we end up in this mess again. We're going to make sure that everything's good. We'll work with Russia. We're going to work with Ukraine. We're going to make sure it works.

And I think if we can get to peace, it's going to work. I have no doubt about it. And Ukraine's Vladimir Zelenskyy, as you could see sitting to the president's right, adding that this was a far nicer meeting than the one they had back in February. We need to stop this war to stop Russia and we need support American and European partners. We will do our best for this. Now remember, any agreement that could end Russia's war in Ukraine could also be seen as a major

positive for the stock market as well. So both the political and economic focus is on this meeting. Of course, that is not all that is happening this week. Jerome Powell hosting the important economic gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the market looking for any clear sign of an interest rate cut or cuts at the upcoming Fed meeting in September. As all this is happening, the markets are kind of in a holding pattern, clearly pending the outcome of what is happening in Washington right now and what will happen in Wyoming later on in the week, markets very, very slightly down

with the small cap stocks up 3 tenths of 1%. So let's get you set up for all of it from all sides. In D.C., we've got Aiman Javers. Here on set, Michelle Caruso-Cabre, and we will add other great voices to the conversation as the show goes on. Amon Javers, let's begin with you. Where do we stand right now? Sort of what is the tick-by-tick of what we can expect the rest of the day? Well, what we just saw is the spray, the pool spray, as we call it, between President Zelensky and Trump and the Oval Office. It's that coming just before their meeting one-on-one and before their sit down with European leaders, top European leaders who are gathered here in a separate room right now at the White House, waiting for their chance to speak to the president.

So all of that will happen consecutively throughout the afternoon. The president and Zelensky meeting side by side. Then the European leaders brought in at some point in there. They're hoping to have a lunch. We'll see if meal gets served here at any point because these conversations, can be unwieldy and long-winded as every side wants to get a word in on it. And then the president has just said that he's going to have a call with Vladimir Putin, who he met with on Friday in Alaska after all of this.

He is hoping to set up what he called a trilateral meeting. There you see him meeting one-on-one with Vladimir Putin last week. He's hoping to have that three-way meeting, the trilateral meeting, relatively soon, in quick order, between himself, Putin and Zelensky, to resolve this war. The question is whether they can come up with terms here today that will actually resolve the war in any kind of a way that Vladimir Putin can accept and Vladimir Zelensky can accept. That's going to be a daunting challenge. We'll wait and see what the body language is, what the statements are as they emerge. Well, you read, you said, Amen, body language. I did find an

interesting, and so did Michelle, that Zelensky did not show up in his normal garb, sort of that long-sleeved t-shirt. He got admonished by the president last time. He kind of split the middle, I think, button-up jacket. There was, but there was, I only bring that up because there was some deference to President Trump. And I also want to make this clear to our audience, correct, that the two sides just did a small press conference before the meeting. So nothing, Zelensky had just arrived, so they didn't have any meet on what they actually are going to discuss. Yeah, that was a pre-meeting press availability. So we don't know how the meeting is gone yet, obviously, and they couldn't read that out to us. And you're right, you know, I was watching

Zelensky's attire because, you know, it sounds, you know, small, but it's an important detail, and it has been, it was a flashpoint back in February. I couldn't tell, honestly, from my vantage point here, whether Zelensky's wearing a tie, but he does appear to be wearing a black jacket and black shirt. So a little bit less of sort of the military fatigues style outfit that he was wearing earlier in the year that seemed to anger President Trump and Vice President Vance. Zelensky has been wearing that outfit, by the way, and has said that he won't stop wearing it because he views himself as a military leader of a nation at war, and he's under attack, and he's wearing it in solidarity with the front line units.

He has obviously worn a suit in high-profile appearances before, notably when he addressed the U.S. Congress, so he can do that. But today, interesting, there's going to be a lot of analysis of what exactly he was wearing and what exact message he was trying to send with that. It's not small at all. As a matter of fact, it's a sign of deference to the president, whether or not you want to have him sort yelling at you again because of what you're wearing. There was a sign, almost a peace offering, if you will. Michelle Crusoebaugh is here, obviously, this meeting critical to Ukraine and its people.

But for our American audience, kind of watching from afar, is there a best possible outcome for this meeting? When it comes to the American people, I think the most interesting and the most thorny question is, what does a security guarantee for Ukraine look like? It's very clear what the outlines of a deal are. They're expecting Zelensky, as painful and unseemly as it is, to give up some land. In exchange for some kind of NATO-like security guarantee, what does that look like? We've talked about how difficult it would be for Putin to accept that.

We've talked about how difficult it is for Zelensky to do what he's going to do. But there's also the question of, would there be U.S. troops, on the ground as part of that guarantee. The president was asked about it twice. He did not say yes, but he didn't say no. He said, as Amon said earlier, the Europeans are going to be the front line, but we're going to help them out. What does that mean?

There are prominent foreign policy people in D.C. Right now, calling for a uniformed American presence on the ground in Western Ukraine as a backstop. I think that's the big issue. And that is politically, extremely difficult for this president because, we're going to be Because, remember, he talked about Americans getting out of Europe, getting out of Ukraine. So, not that we have them there now, but... The idea then being, and we have the map of the wall, the idea then being that Ukraine would seed...

Something. Something. Some Donbos region. Crimea was already invaded and taken over by Russia back in 2014. I was actually in Russia when that began. So they would seed some of that ground in exchange for some kind of security guarantee. which may or may not involve U.S. troops. There is a market angle to this as well.

Is there not, Michelle, there's Rheinmetal, for example, is a company? There's lots of them, yeah. It's like the Lockheed Martin of Germany, for lack of a better term. It's a defense contractor. That stock, and I think we have the chart, has been soaring in the last year. On this idea, number one, they're going to look at that stock because they're going to spend more money, because it's seen that Germany and these other countries that are there might rearm, restimulate, partly as a backstop for Ukraine.

Oh, 100%. When President Trump threatened to pull out of NATO, they all woke up and said, oh, maybe we need to do something ourselves instead. And so that's why you've seen all of the European defense companies absolutely rallying because it seemed that there was finally political will to get something done. Go back to the red line that President Obama drew in Syria in the wake of the chemical weapons attack. When we ask for support, the French could get their planes off the ground.

The Germans could not get their planes off the ground because they didn't have enough equipment. They didn't have enough material to actually be able to mount an attack. They were not ready. I don't think they're ready right now. They're getting there. But that's why this question of how much will the U.S. be involved in a guarantee is critical. Because right now, where are the guarantee? And, Aiman, we're C&BC.

Listen, the money part of the story is kind of what we do. And money is a massive issue here. Michelle and I were talking before the show that one thing Vladimir Zelensky said, Volodymyr Zelensky, was that he wanted money to rearm so they could provide defense for their people. Vladimir Putin has said he wanted a disarmed Ukraine. I mean, those are wildly different things, but there's no way they're going to disarm Ukraine because then at some point Russia would just do what it does, lies and goes back in again. So is there a big money angle here as well?

Absolutely. And there's two big money questions here, Brian. One is how far is the United States prepared to go to extend those security guarantees when it comes to providing for something that could be very expensive, right? The president just there, and I think Michelle's exactly right to put her finger on it, the president just there did not take off the table the prospect of U.S. troops in Ukraine as part of a security guarantee for Ukraine. He said, we'll be involved in some way.

Didn't specify the way. That could be an expensive prospect. The second question here is Vladimir Putin's sort of economic throw weight. How much does Putin have in reserve to continue to spend on this war, given that the sanctions have taken a bite out of his economy? They haven't shut him down completely by any stretch, but they have taken a bite, and that this war has cost him an enormous amount of money so far. how much longer can Putin afford to keep armies in the field is an unknown question.

And so those are calculations that Putin and Trump are each going to have to make in their own head. How much money do I have available and how much am I willing to commit to this enterprise going forward? And if there were to be a deal, and it's going to be very, very hard to get there. But if there were to be a deal, reinvestment in Russia, there's many consumer products companies that left. There's an oil industry that could go in there and invest. And remember, BlackRock has done an entire analysis of what it would take to rebuild Ukraine. They're talking about $750 billion worth of investment. If investors were confident enough that, one, the war is over, and two, that Ukraine had reformed enough to not worry so much about corruption,

there's a lot that could be done there. A Marshall Plan for Ukraine could lead to a lot of business and a lot of good for the Ukraine. Ukraine is also one of the biggest agriculture. producers in the world as well. So when you look at the business angle, and again, I know that seems a little unseemly to a lot of people, but that's what we do on CNBC. We're talking about the money and economic side. There's a huge economic story here because Ukraine's ability to sell wheat and to sell other commodity products like that safely where they don't have to worry about their ships potentially getting attacked in Odessa or wherever it may be. That's also a part of the

economic story here. There's nothing unseemly about talking about business because business provides jobs. It provides livelihoods. It gets people back to work. It helps them get over war. We did that here in the United States after World War II, right? So there's nothing unseemably about talking about what comes next and what can business do to help for sure. And it is quite a lot. Agriculture is another area that you talked about. Ukraine needs reconstruction of all kinds. And when Marco Rubio was asked by Kristen Walker this weekend, the map that we're showing you right now, we've been showing here on CNBC. Is that frozen? Does Russia get all of that? And Rubio was absolutely clear. No, that is not the way the final map is going to work. That means there's a lot of reconstruction

work to be done in those areas if and when there is a deal. It also means that Russian troops are going to have to voluntarily leave some areas. Putin is going to order them back. Get out, go away, stop here. Putin has not exactly been a man of his word. No, I'll believe it when I see it. Correct. As will the world. Michelle, we're going to, Eamon and Michelle, we're going to sit by to you now, but if I could be polite enough to ask you to kind of hang around. I know Aym and Will, Michelle, for the hour, we don't know what's going to happen. You bet. Good?

Happy to help. All right. So, much more to come on this busy. And as you can tell, pretty fluid power lunch, not just coverage of this, but also what retailers and the state of Wyoming have in common for your money this week. Oh, and by the way, speaking of retailers, how will tariffs really in? impact retailers, your bill and you. Courtney Reagan up with that. Plus the move one big pharma player just made to make getting weight loss drugs a little bit cheaper for you. All that and continued coverage of the big Ukraine summit at the White House coming up.

All right, welcome back to Power Lunch. It is a key week for your money, of course, not just including the Ukraine talks that are happening right now at the White House. And of course, we will bring you any new headlines or comments. The command. out of that meeting. But you've also got Wall Street awaiting Fed Chair Jerome Powell's highly anticipated speech from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Now, that is on Friday. And there's also another bond market angle kind of floating around out there. Could the bond market actually revolt and just kind of do what it wants anyway if it doesn't hear what it wants to hear from Jay Powell on Friday? We say that because two-year yields, they seem to be sending some kind of signal about what bond

investors want or need from the Federal Reserve. We'll wait and see, but right now the market's also kind of in a wait and see mode ahead of Powell and his speech on Friday. All right, now to stocks, and your next guest just raised his year-end S&P 500 target to 6600 from 6300. But 6600 does not really imply any more upside to the market, at least for now. And there are still many risks that lurk underneath the hood. Let's talk about it all with. Scott Croner, he is U.S. equity strategist at City. Now, Scott, you just wrote that the S&P 500 is moving down, quote, two parallel paths. One of those is the mega-cap tech growth stocks we talk about all the time.

But the other one is a little more of a balanced part of the index. What do you mean by that? And sort of which one do you see kind of winning out over time? Yeah, Brian, this is a really good, an important topic for anyone looking at the equity markets right now. the parallel path is essentially in our work, you've got roughly half of the market capitalization of the S&P 500 attached to this AI tailwind, the infrastructure spending, and all the activity that comes with it. That leaves the other half that's more susceptible to more traditional economic metrics, monetary policy issues, and the geopolitical spectrum. And so our point is that

when you look at the growth setup for this year for the S&P 500, consider that. census has it around 9%. Literally half of that comes from the Mag 7. So you see the point here. We have a fairly bifurcated market that is beating to a couple of different drummers. So we've got eyes on many different balls in the air right now. Yeah, you also wrote about what you call a thinner left tail, the left tail, in EPS earnings per share growth distribution. What does that mean? Well, there's a win by winning and there's a win by not losing, right? So when you look at the S&P 500, we talk about this construct of broadening from an earnings growth perspective, which should drive performance broadening, well, how do you get there? Well, one of the aspects of

this is if you look at the S&P constituents right now, roughly a quarter of them are set up for negative year over-year earnings growth this year. So as you go forward to 2026 and you look at what's the argument here where that left tail, those companies with negative earnings growth, begin to switch to a more positive earnings growth dynamic. That tail then provides an aspect of earnings growth into next year that we don't have this year. Point being is that we look for growth acceleration next year. What do we need? Parallel of market.

We need that persistence of the mega cap growth AI playbook unfolding. But we also need the rest of the market showing its own earnings growth acceleration. A lot of this is going to be from negative to positive. So I guess let's talk a little math, right? Why not? It's Monday, Scott. If the MAG 7 or MAG 10, let's say that the top 10 names of weight, which to your point are about half the index now, that they don't do anything for the next year, right?

I hope they do, but let's say they don't. Right. And the other 490 start to finally outperform. Does the 490 outweigh the 10? Could the market still go up if those 10 don't outperform? perform. I'd say that we'd be hard pressed to see a dramatic upside to the markets if you don't have that AI exposed cohort participating. Isn't that amazing? I completely agree with you because it's just math, it's 50% of the weight, right? Yeah, yeah. But isn't that amazing that 10 stocks run

everything? No, I mean, you, I mean, it's, you can for some period of time, but I think, you know, the way we talk about it is that what does a healthy market look like? And, A very narrow market is typically perceived as not particularly healthy because there are too many, you know, too many, you know, implications for the importance of that very narrow leadership. So you want to see the broadening as sort of a, as a sign that the underlying economic trend is going your way. It's supporting a broadening down many different paths, other sectors that kind of tie back to what you were talking about in your last segment on geopolitics. But the bottom line here is that, no, you can go higher for something.

period of time. But if we're talking about a structural bull setup, which increasingly is our view, you need a broadening dynamic to persist into next year and probably beyond. So let's wrap it up by talking about the geopolitics. And I do want to remind our viewers that we are covering this Trump-Zolensky-EU-NATO meeting at the White House. They're in closed-door meetings. Any headlines we are going to bring them to our viewers immediately. But I will ask you this, Scott and whatever, hedge if you want to, what is more important right now to the stock market? Is it J. Powell and the Fed in Jackson Hole on Friday? Or is it the ultimate outcome of this Zelensky, Ukraine, Russia peace talks? I'd say the former, Brian, we've been living with Russia, Ukraine, for

several years now. You know, when it first started, we thought, oh, my gosh, we need to, you know, lower our valuation target for the S&P by a couple of turns just for geopolitical risk. That lasted for a few months, but then we moved on. The markets, for the most part, from a fundamental perspective, have moved on. But what you've seen as we go down this President Trump policy path is that as you put more of these issues behind you, whether it's policy related, whether it's the Iran circumstance, in the Middle East potential upside escalation risk, as you put those issues behind you, it just gives that risk-on dynamic to markets a little bit more salvo, if you will. So at the end of the day, the market is telling you it expects that the Fed is ultimately

going to be lowering interest rates in the back half of the year. We think that's the right thing to do given where we think inflation is going and where the labor conditions are going. And I think ultimately, ultimately, that's probably at the margin, the more important dynamic at work right now. Okay, well said. We appreciate it. Scott Croner, City. Scott, have a great day. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, on deck. The real impact on tariffs on the retailers, retail earnings, and you. We're also watching this meeting at the White House, President Trump, as we said, meeting with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, leaders of five European nations, the head of the EU and the head of NATO. They're in closed

door meetings now. If and when in the next 47 or so minutes, they come back out or any headlines are made. You will hear about them on power launch. They will happen later in the day. You will hear about them all day and all night right here on CNBC. Markets basically flat to maybe slightly down. We're back right after this. All right. It is a big week ahead for retail and retail earnings. You get Home Depot results tomorrow. You get Target and Lowe's on Wednesday. You get Walmart on Thursday. And it is possible that we are going to see some of the impact of tariffs on the numbers.

Courtney Rigged is here now to talk about how tariffs could influence margins based on the accounting methods of each company? I know. Is that where we are now? That is where we are. This is important because three of the four that you mentioned actually use the type of accounting where we could see this impact. So in general, retailers use two different main methods. accounting. One is cost accounting. There's different flavors of that, but it uses the actual cost of every item. And then the retail method of accounting or RIM, that uses an average cost to price

ratio. Now, with RIM, the more cost a retailer absorbs, meaning they're not passing along that higher tariff in the price, the higher the ratio move. See this? See how cost gets bigger? And then in that actual equation, so does ratio. So that can overstate profitability in a moment in time because it takes several quarters for the cost volatility to average out when this is the way you're doing your accounting. So a simplified example, thanks to some help from PWC, is if you start with a base case, we've got different T-shirts, three different kinds. Under cost accounting, you get to a gross margin of 46%. Those same T-shirts, but using RIM accounting, you get a gross margin of 53%. So already higher without the influence of tariffs. Add in the influence of tariffs.

So now the cost of the T-shirt increases. Let's assume the retailer passes along that in price. Consumers then are going to buy fewer of those more expensive shirts. So when you add in those changes, the gross margin differential between the two accounting methods, if you look at the very first two bars and the very last two vars, eventually falls to 27 percent in cost. cost accounting, but is still 46% under retail inventory method accounting because it hasn't had time for that ratio to average out. So it looks like a retailer is more profitable in the short term than they actually will when those numbers start to get closer in that average ratio.

I got a lot of questions. I know. Number one, I feel smarter, which is great. I've got horrors of like accounting in college, which is a tough cost. It's not even 101. This is like accounting 401. It's good. This is good. We're getting smarter. That's what we want to do. Why would anybody use the rim method? So a long time ago. Is that a stupid question? No, it's not a stupid question. I asked that too. And a long time ago, what I've been told is before we had Excel, you had an abacus and you kind of had to do your best. And so it was better to average things than to actually count every single item one by one. But now that we have technology, you use cost accounting. However, for a retailer to switch, which can be done,

But it takes a lot of money. It takes a couple years. And it's just a complicated system to go through. But PWC says about half the retailers that they work with have at least considered doing it. Macy's and Nordstrom did recently switch from RIM to cost accounting. My guess is there are plenty of companies like the aforementioned wonderful PWC, as well as software companies that would be more than happy to assist in a multi-year transition. Why should investors care?

So investors should care because if one of these retailers that is using the retail inventory method of accounting puts up a gross margin profitability that looks a little bigger than it should be based on historical averages, don't get overly excited immediately that, oh my gosh, all of a sudden they got more profitable. It might just be a temporary blip because of accounting. Because in that moment in time when they had to end their quarter and they had to report that, the ratio had not have time to average out the higher cost with the lower cost by the time it sold those goods. So just because I know the internet, and we have this thing called social media, I don't know if you've heard it, which is like prone to...

Can be good, can be bad. So when a real, if Walmart comes out on Thursday with slightly better numbers, one crowd is going to be like, see, the tariffs don't really matter. But if they come out with slightly worse numbers, the other side of the crowd is going to be like, see, tariffs matter. but what you're saying is one quarter doth not a trend make. Absolutely. And the more, based on the inventory and how quick it can turn, it can take two to four quarters to this to average out. And a company is required by SEC rules.

If this is material, the cost of accounting, if it differs materially in the way that they present their gross margins, that they are going to have to explain that to us. Amazing. And I understand there's also more to this piece on the interwebs. Yes. I wrote up a longer explanation, did some math for you to follow along if you'd like to see it on CNBC.com that kind of takes you through this example. I quite literally had to do the math in the equations myself to really see how this happens.

Let me tell you something. That is a quality Miami of Ohio education right there at work. I took those accounting classes there and at NYU Stern. It's the NBA too. You don't know I'm married to Red Hawk. I know. We're the best. Miami of Ohio was a college before Florida was a state. That's right. Isn't that what they say in Oxford, Ohio? Absolutely. 1809. That's when Miami University was founded.

Wow. Courtney, we learned multiple things today. So many facts. So many facts. Courtney Reagan, thank you very much. Right. Coming up a power check on some more names reporting key results this week, including this mystery stock. That is up 40% in three months. We're on the radio. You have no idea what we're showing. If you're watching on TV, send us your guests.

And just a reminder, we are continuing to watch the meeting at the White House, President Trump, meeting with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as leaders of five European nations, the head of the EU and the head of NATO. Any news or headlines that come out, you will receive them the moment they occur. Again, a live look at the White House, closed door meetings. When the headlines cross, you will hear them first. In the meantime, it's time for a power check where we walk you through some of the big six. stock stories catching our collective eyes. Today, it's three companies reporting their earnings this week. They are Internet Security Company, Palo Alto, cosmetics firm Estee Lauder, and River

Cruise Company Vikings. Now, Palo Alto Network's numbers come out Tuesday, Viking Holdings later in the week, and Estee Lauder as well. Joining us out to talk about how you should be training these names, if at all, going into the Prince is Michael Landsberg. He is the CIO at Landsberg-Bennett, Private. Wealth Management. Michael, good to have you on. Power Check. Thank you. How do we treat Palo Alto networks right now? Hello Alto is a great story, Brian. Cybersecurity is one of those businesses that

continues to keep moving forward. The smarter AI gets the smarter AI cybersecurity has to get. And so, you know, stock traded back a bit when they announced a purchase of an offer to buy cyber arc, the big Israeli company, which we've also owned and continue to own. We think it just speaks to the volume that we're going to see in the space over the time. Stock should, I think, hopefully trade off a bit for people that don't own it. EPS, I think it's going to be up 16% year over year. If it is, I would be a buyer of it there with the idea you're going to hold this. We've held this for 10 years. I anticipate holding it another 5 to 7. It's one of our longer term holdings and it's been a real winner. All right. Let's talk about Vikings holdings.

We talk about cruise companies all the time, Michael. Normally Norwegian and Carnival. We entirely miss Those low, flat boats that tend to go down the Danube and send under beautiful bridges. But what do we make of the stock? Well, it's funny, Brian. My clients and your viewers don't miss it because Viking has done a really good job of marketing themselves to hire in consumers, more of adult only. They go to every continent in the world. And it's a smaller boat. It's a smaller bespoke experience.

So you're not competing with thousands and thousands of people on these boats. I think people like that. They want to have that high end experience. earnings that we think are going to be up 32% year over year, and we anticipate this continuing. It's a great friend, and we'll want to own it. We don't own it now. I'd like a pullback, but I own the entire space, as you mentioned other names, we think it's a good name. Okay. The mystery's chart was Estée Lauder. Stocks had a nice run the last couple of months. What do we make of it now?

St. Lauder is a little tricky here. There's a lot of cosmetics companies in the world, and my fear with Estée Lauder is your last section, Courtney talked about all the accounting regularities and shuffling that people have to do. Statewater hasn't grown the earnings or the revenue in probably four plus years. Lots of competition. And my fear is there's just so much. There's so many choices out there. It's really tough.

Now, this is going to be the worst, let's say the bottom for earnings. I think they're down 85% year over a year. Maybe this is the bottom that you could be a buyer down the road. We don't own it. We're not going to own it. But I'm hoping at some point they've got good quality brands. just the stock's been kind of one of those things that earnings-wise, it just doesn't make the money that excites us to be able to step in.

Michael Lansberg, CIO at Lansberg, Bennett, private wealth management, blasting through power check. Michael, and we appreciate it. Thank you very much. Let's step out of the market for a minute and get Kate Rogers with a CNBC news update. Hi, Brian. Democrats return to the floor of the Texas House today, clearing the way for their Republican counterparts to pass new congressional maps that favor the GOP.

A quorum is present. A group of Democrats fled the state two weeks ago to delay the vote on the maps, which would create five new Republican-leaning districts. Hamas says it agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal presented by mediators from Egypt and Qatar. An Egyptian official tells Reuters the proposal includes the temporary suspension of military operations for 60 days, which would see the exchange of Palestinian prisoners in return for half of the Israeli hostages. And Newsmax agreed to a settlement with Dominion voting systems, which had accused the right-wing network of broadcasting false and defamatory statements about voter fraud and manipulation in the 2020 election. In an SEC filing, Newsmax said it will resolve the lawsuit with Dominion for $67 million to be paid in the current and next two fiscal years. It comes after Fox settled with Dominion in 23 for a staggering $787 million over similar claims.

Brian, back over to you. All right, Kate, thank you very much. All right, still ahead. Where elbow grease meets computing power at the intersection of clean energy and our nation's infrastructure. CryptoWatch is sponsored by Crypto.com. Crypto.com is America's premier crypto platform. All right, welcome back to Power Lunch. Despite a shift in government's support for renewable energy, private projects are still going forward.

and new technology is making their construction more efficient. Diana Olock has the details that are continued series on climate-based startups. Diana. Well, Brian, if you've flown or driven across the country, you've probably seen a solar farm. The panels are meticulously placed, and that used to take a lot of time to do, relying, of course, on human power. But now robotics are taking on the job. This is CivDOT, a four-wheeled robot that can mark up to 3,000 layout points per day, with up to 8mm accuracy.

It can ride over rugged terrain and work through rough weather, the brainchild of California-based SIV robotics. Our secret sauce is being able to take the blueprint and perform the marking really, really precisely, efficiently, without needing to be a skilled surveyor in the field. The data for manual surveying is simply uploaded into the SIV software. The operator then chooses the area they want to mark,

and presses go. The robot does the rest, saving both time and money. The manual surveying equipment, if you use that in the field and you have three crews, they will need three land surveying handheld receivers. That alone is already equal to how much we lease our machines in the field, and all the labor savings is just another benefit. SIV robotics has more than 100 of these in the field now, primarily being used by renewable energy companies, but also by oil and gas. also by oil and gas. It's currently working with Bechtel on several solar projects like this one.

These were usually pretty highly paid field engineers that we would send out there and they might be able to do 250 or 350 pile marks a day. With the CivDOT robot, we're able to do about 1250 a day. Siv Robotics is backed by AlleyCorp, FF Venture Capital, Bobcat Company, and new fund capital, Trimble Ventures, and Converge. Total funding to date, $12.5 million. Now, as for competition in the space, other robotic solutions are doing markings, mostly on highways and soccer fields, not on highways. But Yishirun argues that those can't really survive terrains that the solar industry faces

as it expands into new territories. All right, Diana, Oleg, thank you very much. I want to give you a live look right now. This is what they're going to call a family photograph. This is the leaders that are at the White House right now. You can see some journalists and photographers scrambling for space. President Trump, obviously, in the middle. He is flanked on his right, your left, by Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky.

And on his left by French president, Emmanuel Macron. They call this the family photo. Again, five European leaders, five leaders of European nations, the head of the EU, the head of Volodymyr Zelensky and President Donald J. Trump. That was not a great day. Just listening to see if President Trump makes any comments. You heard him say something like, Is everything okay? You all say?

Here we go. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Appreciate you. Thank you. Okay. Just asking if everything is okay.

As the leaders go back to closed door meetings, we are rejoined by our first and former colleague, Michelle Caruso-Crabura. I know Amon Javvers is somewhere probably in that room. We'll see if he makes his way to a camera as well. Amon is there and good. This is fantastic news. Michelle, again, we don't know what they're saying now.

We will likely learn later. Again, kind of reiterating what we talked about at the beginning of the show. What should investors hope for today? Some kind of agreement amongst all these countries that there's going to be at least a framework for figuring out how they're going to provide a security guarantee to Ukraine because that seems to be what's on the table. The impression that I get from all of the coverage, from all of the interviews, and Marco Rubio said over the weekend that

President Trump had been speaking with all of these leaders in advance, has been, this isn't the first time they're talking today all in the same room. They've been talking nonstop since Friday. Can they come up with a security framework that works for everyone? I think that's going to be extremely difficult. And I'm going to editorialize a little bit that I believe that if we get a firm date on a trilateral meeting. In other words, if President Trump or Vladimir Zelensky come out later today, or any one of those leaders, by the way, you come out later today or tomorrow, whenever, and say on this date,

Zelensky and Putin and Trump and probably some of those other leaders are going to meet somewhere. That would seem to be a positive development. That would suggest that there's been enough progress, enough concessions by everyone involved to get them all in the same room. Yes, absolutely, for sure. You know, there's a market tell you can use to figure out whether or not the markets think there's going to be an agreement. Ukraine has bonds that trade.

And when Trump got elected, they rallied very, very sharply. And then they peaked the day of the meeting of Zelensky. How thinly traded, though, or you and I have talked about, I mean, how, are we talking about bonds that get bought once a month? Oh, so. That's the problem. It's hard to know. Well, distress emerging market debt will always trade far less than say it's no invidia, of course. But it trades enough to give you an indication of what investors are thinking.

The day of the meeting between Zelensky and President Trump in the White House that went so poorly, they peaked that day at like 77 cents on the dollar, and then they sunk like a stone as a result. And they kept falling and falling and falling until last week they started to rise again. Okay. Amon Javers is there. Do not worry. Amon, we are not going to ask your opinion. on Ukrainian debt. That said, we will ask your opinion based literally on facial expressions

of the leaders that we have seen. It looked like Zelensky and Trump were laughing. We mentioned earlier that Zelensky had worn some kind of a suit, sort of a sign of maybe a peace offering to the president. Does it seem likely at this point that we sort of will agree to agree that another meeting is, let's hope, likely down the road? Well, I mean, first things first, Brian, fact that the that was so-called family photo happened at all as an indication that things are on track schedule wise and in terms of the meetings they're keeping to the regular order. So this is not the situation that we had back in February where things broke down and Zelensky was hustled out of the White House pretty quickly after that meeting and they canceled the rest

of the afternoon's events. So from that perspective, things are going well. That was a very serious photo op. Not a lot of words said you heard the president speaking to camera people there. The opportunity there was for the steel cameras to get a picture of all those leaders side by side, and it's an impressive tableau as they all stand there. So not necessarily an opportunity to talk to cameras, but there wasn't a lot of gripping and grinning, you know, padding of backs and the other things that you're used to seeing when you see politicians side by side. In this case, given the gravity and enormity of the subject, maybe that's appropriate.

But this did not feel to me like a group of people that was super. enthusiastic about what have been happening behind closed doors. We'll wait and see for, you know, more official readouts than just kind of taking the body language. And I know there there's probably some people out there that are listening or watching and thinking, why are we talking about a photograph? Why are we talking about Zelensky's outfit? It is because, Amon, I would presume in your years of doing this and all of our years of doing this, that you're looking for the little things, right? The smile here, the frown there, the handshake here, what are they saying? What are they doing? Those are the only clues,

we have right now. Yeah, and we're just getting live pictures now, Brian, as you can see here, of the roundtable discussion. That is a live look in, and that I believe is the state dining room. Someone correct me in my ear, if I'm wrong, and you see the booth of translators there behind them. You can only imagine the translation difficulty when you have all these European leaders speaking all these different languages at the same table at the same time.

But we're getting a peek now into the- meeting being run by the president. There you go. Yep, yep. And we are going to listen in to President Trump right now. President Putin right after this meeting. I'm sure we're going to have a solid meeting, good meeting, maybe a great meeting, and we're going to try and work out a trilat after that and see if we can get it finished. Put this to sleep, because this is not since the Second World War has there been anything like this. So I'm honored to welcome NATO Secretary General. Mark Ruta, who's a great gentleman, great, great political leader in Europe generally, but now he's the NATO Secretary General and you're doing a fantastic job.

Thank you very much, Mark. Prime Minister Starmor of the United Kingdom, our friend and my friend and doing really well, and people like them a lot. We all like him. Everyone knows President Macron of France, who's been with me from the beginning, one of the first. first people I met as a foreign dignitary, and I liked them from day one. And I like him even more now. That's pretty good. That's unusual. That's a pretty unusual thing. Prime Minister Maloney of Italy, who's a really great leader and an inspiration over there. She's served now, even though she's a very young person, she's served there for a long period of time relative to others.

They don't last very long. You've lasted a long time. You're going to be there a long time. Chancellor Merz of Germany, who is a very strong person and a very strong leader and very highly respected in Germany. And he's my friend, and it's an honor to have him

as my friend. Thank you very much. Very good. You look great with your tan. When did you get that tan? I want to get a tan like that. President Stubb of Finland and he's somebody that, where are we here?

Where? I'm right here. Oh, you look better than I've ever seen you look. But you've done a great job, and we wanted to have you here because you're somebody that we all respect, and you've had a lot to do with the success, I think, and the potential success, and thank you very much for being here. We appreciate it.

And the President of the European Commission, Ursula, Vonderland, who is somebody that we just made a big deal with, with all of those countries. I don't know. I think you might be more powerful than all these guys at this table. I don't know. But we had a great negotiation, and you're respected all over the world. So I want to thank you very much for being here. It's a great honor to have you.

The Alaska Summit reinforced my belief that while difficult pieces within reach, and I believe that in a very significant step, President, Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine, and this is one of the key points that we need to consider, and we're going to be considering that at the table also, like, who will do what, essentially. I'm optimistic that collectively we can reach an agreement that would deter any future aggression against Ukraine, and I actually think there won't be. I think that's even overrated, largely overrated, but we're going to find out. And I think that the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden.

We're going to help them, and we're going to make it very secure. We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory taken into consideration the current line of contact. That means the war zone, the war lines that are pretty obvious, very sad, actually, to look at them. And negotiating positions, President Putin, also, you have. President of Ukraine, who is – you just met a little while ago, and we're going to try and get a three-party meeting maybe as soon as we can, and I have a feeling you and President Putin are going to work something out. Ultimately, this is a decision that can only be made by President Zelensky

and by the people of Ukraine working also together in agreement with President Putin, and I just think that's very good things that are going to come of. So I hope we have a good meeting. And if we can have a good meeting, I'll set up a meeting with President Putin. And if you'd like, I'll go to that meeting. And not that I want to do that, but I will do that because we want to save a lot of people from dying. A lot of people are dying, and we've got to save them. I've got to save it.

5,000, 6,000, 7,000 people sometimes a week. All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace. And maybe something like that could happen. And as of this moment, it's not happening. But President Zelensky and President Putin can talk a little bit more about that. You know, in the six or so wars that we stopped, we haven't had a ceasefire. And so I don't know that it's necessary. You can do it through the war.

But it would be – I like the ceasefire from another standpoint. You immediately stop the killing. But I believe a peace agreement at the end of all of this is something that's very attainable. and it can be done in the near future. With all of the wars that I got involved in, we only have this one left. Of course, as I walk out the door, there'll probably be a new one starting, and I'll get that stop, too. But I thought this was going to be one of the easier ones. It's actually one of the most difficult, very complex.

The next step would be for a trilateral meeting, and that will be worked out, and I just look forward to working and having a great result. We're going to spend a lot of time today talking about, and we're really honored you guys came over. I mean, these are the heads of major countries and respected all over Europe. And they speak for largely, I think I should say, but pretty much for the other countries of Europe.

And we will come to a resolution today, I think, on almost everything, including probably the security. And that's pretty much a story. I'd like to say, Mr. President, would you like to say something? You have the media? If you want, you could come over and you could stand, you could use mine or you could just turn around, whichever you feel comfortable with.

Thank you so much. I can speak without microphone. Thank you too much. I think that we had very good conversation with President Trump. Very good. And it really was the best one. Or sorry, maybe the best one will be in the future. But it was really good. And we spoke about very sensitive points. The first one is, security guarantees and we are very happy with President that all the leaders are here and the security in Ukraine depends on the United States and on you and on those leaders who are with us in our hearts they have been online before yesterday and etc so a lot of countries on the side of Ukraine our people and all of us want to finish this war stop Russia and stop this war we spoke about it and we will speak more about security guarantees this is very important

that the United States gives such strong signal and is ready for security guarantees. The second point, or maybe the first, humanitarian direction, very important to exchange all the business. And I think that President will help, and I was very thankful to your wife again, Mr. President, for the letter about our abducted children. And I hope that really it can be a historic role for the historic role for the people to bring kids back to the families and be happy. Get the people back, yeah?

Yes, this is so, so important, and I'm happy that we discussed it, this track with President Trump, and I hope that we will find decisions. And then what is very important that all the sensitive things, territorial, et cetera, we will discuss on the level of leaders during trilateral meeting, and President Trump will try to organize such meeting and he said that he will come or not come. Ukraine will be happy if you will participate. If you both want me there, I will be there. Yeah, thank you.

And I think this is very important. Yes, security guarantees bringing these back and all our people, not only warriors, first of all, warriors and all the civilians, journalists, a lot of people in prison. So we need them back and guarantees which will work for the years. We spoke about it. And I showed the President a lot of details on the battlefield, on the map. Thank you so much. Thank you for the map, by the way.

Good map. It was great. I'm thinking how to take it back. We'll get you. No, no, no. I think that we had constructive specific meeting. And I'm very thankful to all the leaders who are here. here and you help a lot and so we are happy that we have such big unity today.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Mr. President.