Reuters World News - US-Ukraine minerals deal, GDP blame game and Reform UK

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

After months of fraught negotiations, the U.S. and Ukraine have signed the minerals deal sought by U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump struggles to explain weak economic data as he reaches the 100-day mark. And the UK’s new-look populist Reform party looks to shake up the political landscape in local elections.  *Please note this podcast has been republished adding a line introducing correspondent Andrew Macaskill Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, the US and Ukraine sign a long-awaited mineral deal. President Trump struggles to explain weak economic data. And Nigel Farage's Populist Reform Party are hoping for big gains in English local elections. It's Thursday, May 1st. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every weekday. I'm Tara Oaks in Liverpool. Ukraine and the United States have signed a minerals deal after months of sometimes fraught negotiations. The deal gives Washington access to Kiev's rare earth minerals in exchange for an investment fund in Ukraine.

Our foreign policy editor Don Durfey has the latest. The basic idea here is that the US and Ukraine are going to create this joint reconstruction fund. And going into that fund will be revenues from Ukraine's natural resources, right? rare earths, other kinds of national resources. And so 50% of the revenues that the Ukrainian state would ordinarily receive are to go into this thing. And it's taken a lot of negotiation, right? How favorable is the deal to Ukraine in the end? So it appears this deal is much more favorable to Ukraine than some previous drafts that have been out there. Our reporters got some details of what was in the draft. One is in a previous version of the,

this deal, it had said that Ukraine would need to pay back the United States all of what the U.S. had spent in terms of military aid for Ukraine during the war, which is estimated to be around $72 billion. The latest version apparently does not have that. It would just need to pay any U.S. military assistance going forward, which is a huge deal for Ukraine, obviously. previous iterations also talked about Ukrainian gas infrastructure being part of the deal. That is not in the latest draft, apparently. Again, that's a really big thing. That's probably Ukraine's most valuable asset.

And Ukraine's first deputy prime minister said in a social media post that this deal may also provide new assistance, for example, air defense systems for Ukraine. Now, we don't know if that's the case. The U.S. has not said anything like that. How important is this agreement to peace negotiations with Russia? The way President Trump has framed it is that by having a deal between the United States and Ukraine that gives the U.S. a financial stake in Ukraine, that it therefore gives the U.S. an incentive to potentially defend Ukraine. Now, Ukraine has always wanted an explicit security guarantee from the U.S., which the U.S. has not been willing to give. But Ukraine at least sees that this is the closest thing to an agreement that will bind the

fates of the United States and Ukraine together as they continue to negotiate this deal with Russia. Israel says it's carried out a warning strike in Syria against an extremist group after violence erupted in Drew's areas. Israel says it's following through on its promise to protect the minority sect, which has followers in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Syria says it rejects all forms of foreign intervention in its internal affairs, without specifically mentioning Israel. And wildfires are raging on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

They've forced evacuations, and Israel is appealing for international help. Colombia student Mosin Madawi has been released on bail from U.S. immigration custody. Madawi is now able to challenge the government's effort to deport him for participating in pro-Palestinian, tests. And conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court are signaling support for an effort to establish the first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in Oklahoma. It's a major test of religious rights and the separation of church and state in American education. You probably saw some numbers today. And I have to start up by saying, that's Biden. That's not Trump. U.S. President Donald Trump, deflecting blame for weak economic data, which showed that the U.S.

economy shrank in the first quarter for the first time in three years. Trump and his aides have struggled to land on a message about the GDP number. I'm not taking credit or discredit for the stock market. I'm just saying that we inherited a mess. Our economics editor, Dan Burns, breaks down their numbers. We're seeing an unusual moment. The economy contracted in some ways because of a surge in spending on imports. And we saw consumer spending rise on things like automobiles. We saw business investment rise in the first quarter, but it was largely on foreign goods to try to get ahead of the tariffs. It's considered to be stealing from future consumption. Trump says that this is the

economy of former President Joe Biden and it has nothing to do with his tariffs. Economists disagree. with that assertion. This is a change that was driven by policy that did not exist prior to Trump returning to office in January. The economy, over the last two years of Biden's presidency on a quarterly basis grew, and there was demonstrable momentum from that that carried into this year. That was very evident in the data we saw. So is this an anomaly that's going to correct itself or is the U.S. heading for a recession? That's the big question. A lot of economists now think that the risk of a recession is higher. It broke a lot of historic patterns, though it's not a done deal.

Until we really see this start to spill over into job losses and rising unemployment, most people think it means it slows growth, makes it choppy, but maybe doesn't bring it to a standstill or reverse it outright. Over in Japan, the central bank has kept interest rates steady and sharply cut its growth forecasts, suggesting that uncertainty surrounding US tariffs and the hit to exports could keep policy in a holding pattern for some time. A fish and chip shop in the English port of Dover

and Nigel Farage meeting supporters. The leader of Reform UK is hoping to serve up a massive shock in UK politics today as local elections take place across England. His right-wing populist party is set to beat Labour and the Conservatives and top the polls. Andrew McCaskill's covering it for us. This is potentially a sort of a moment in British politics. reform are potentially going to emerge as the largest party in these local elections. And they really see this as a moment where they are going to cause the biggest shake-up in

British politics in the last century. For the last hundred years, all the prime ministers have come from either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. But in the last year, we've seen this extraordinary rise in support for reform, led by Nigel Farage, who's best known as one of the main key. campaigners for Brexit. And reform has really become a political force, right? Yeah, I mean, even a year ago, it would have been seen as preposterous that Nigel Farage could be the next Prime Minister of Britain. He wasn't even going to contest a seat in Parliament. And now we're

in a position where he's the betting odds favourite to be the next Prime Minister. They really see these local elections as a key moment, because if they do well, then they'll be able to build the local infrastructure that will be really important when they get to the national elections. They'll have the kind of personnel on the ground who will be able to fight those kind of big national campaigns. How much does reforms messaging matched out of MAGA in the United States? I think Farage is probably the most focal supporter of Trump in UK politics. Farage has said that like Trump, he wants to abandon climate change targets. he would like to deport a lot of asylum seekers, and he's been very supportive of what

earlier Musk has done in terms of cutting government waste in the US. But there are some sort of differences between Farage and Trump. Farage has distanced himself from Trump's tariff policies saying he's done too much too soon. There's also a difference on the approach to Ukraine, where Farage has said that he thinks that Trump is giving too much power to Russia. And for today's recommended read, looking ahead to Australia's weekend election, the centre-left Labour Party looks likely to hold on to power with voters ranking US President Trump's policies as top of mind as they head to the polls. There's a link to the story in the pod description.

For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player and we'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.