Up First from NPR - European Troop Coalition, Heads of State Meet in China, Trump and Labor Day

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

European leaders are drafting plans to send a coalition of troops to Ukraine as part of a possible post-war security guarantee. China's President Xi Jinping is hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit with the leaders of Russia and India gathering in a challenge to US influence. And, how The Trump administration is faring with workers as the President marks his first Labor Day since returning to the White House. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Kevin Drew, Miguel Macias, Emily Kopp, Lisa Thomson and Alice Woefle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Thomas Marchitto. And our technical director is Zach Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Europeans prepare to send soldiers to Ukraine. There's just one little thing they need. US has to be, of course, together with us. This is, I believe, clear for everyone. Where does the U.S. stand on a peace plan? I'm Lela Faudil. That's Stevenski, and this is up first from NPR News. China's president hosts Eurasian heads of state for a summit.

The meeting includes friends and allies of the United States as China challenges U.S. influence. What are the risks for the U.S.? And it's President Trump's first Labor Day back in the White House. Every policy of the Trump administration is designed to lift up the American worker. Many blue-collar workers voted for Trump, so why is the administration canceling some of the projects that gave them work? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. On the plus side, you get sponsored. free listening to over 25 NPR podcasts. On the minus side, you get fewer chances to tap fast forward

on your podcast player. On the plus side, you get to support something you care about. On the minus side, you like challenges and think this makes it too easy. So why don't you join us on the plus side of things with NPR Plus? Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org. European leaders are drafting plans to send a coalition of troops to Ukraine as part of a possible post-war security guarantee. when there's no Russia-Ukraine peace process, much less a peace deal. But European leaders are nonetheless working to come up with ways to help secure Ukraine if and when a deal is struck. Terry Schultz has been tracking the meetings and joins us from Brussels. Hi there, Terry.

Good morning, Steve. What's the plan? Well, this is something European countries have been working on for many months in what they call the Coalition of the Willing. It's spearheaded by France and the UK. And the latest headlines claiming plans are, quote, pretty precise. from an interview with European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen, who's currently traveling through the EU countries on the bloc's eastern flank. Here's what she said about security guarantees for Ukraine when she was in Poland on Sunday. The first line of defense in Ukraine is a strong Ukrainian army. The second line of defense is a multinational group, the coalition of the willing, with the backstop of the Americans. And then the third and most important line of

defense is of course our own defense posture. So these coalition plans do involve sending European troops into Ukraine after a peace agreement has reached and with significant logistical assistance from the U.S., which President Trump assured them he'd provide, but all of this planning is very hypothetical. Does this coalition have enough troops available given that the United States would not participate? Certainly not yet. It's very difficult for leaders to commit their armed forces, as you can imagine, to a dangerous mission that is still so undefined. They've got no idea of where a ceasefire line might be, what the troops would be used for, and again, what kind of U.S. contribution would be there to deter the Russians from attacking.

But some countries have made clear they're less unwilling than others, and Estonia is among them. Here's defense minister Hanophevkar. We are ready to contribute immediately after the ceasefire, and then we have to see how the other allies will continue. We say that the company size unit is something we are considering, and we are ready to deploy. The U.S. has to be, of course, together with us.

This is, I believe, clear for everyone. French President Emmanuel Macron has called a meeting of the coalition in Paris on Thursday, and the U.S. doesn't usually participate in those talks. What the U.S. has done, of course, is speak directly with the Russians and with President Putin. President Trump has set a number of deadlines. He has then let the deadlines slide. And now Ukraine's President Vladimir Zelensky is suggesting that today should be a deadline, a deadline for the Russians to get serious or face.

a tougher response. Do the Europeans have a response? Well, this would, as you say, really be a deadline for President Trump to set, given that he's leading the efforts to bring the two sides in. And Ukraine has agreed to the talks. So European leaders are calling on Trump to put a price on Putin simply continuing to fight. And by the way, Steve, the European Union's own diplomatic mission in Kiev was severely damaged in a Russian airstrike last week. So they're focused on what they can do, pushing through a 19th package of sanctions on Moscow and threat to give some 200 billion euros worth of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine instead of just using the interest on those accounts, as is the case now, to pay for reconstruction. But it's really the

White House that has the stick here. And European partners would very much like to see President Trump use it. Terry Schultz is in Brussels. Thanks so much. Thank you, Steve. Eurasia. Those attending include Russia's leader, an adversary of the United States, and also the prime minister of India, a nation the U.S. has cultivated for many years as a friend. Lately, though, the Trump administration has been pushing India away. So how might China take advantage? NPR international correspondent Diyah Hadid is following this story. Hi there, Diyah. Hi, Steve. Okay, so what's the context to this summit? The context appears to be Trump's remaking of foreign policy, which has felt pretty unpredictable for much of the war.

like tariffs on friends, the European Union and India, initial hostility to Ukraine, now peace talks. So since 2001, China sought to align Asian nations and former Soviet countries, in part through this grouping called the Shanghai Corporation Organization. It's happened in fits and starts, though, but this summit appears to be the most important. It's certainly the largest, and it may well be because China sees an opening. Do you mean an opening to lure American friends and allies more closely to China? Yes, although we can't see any tangible so far from the summit,

but it may well be that the optics right now are the most important thing. President Xi has used this platform to denounce bullying behaviour, he's made a point about the world not just having one superpower, he's offered millions of dollars of aid and loans to member countries, and consider the picture. All these leaders are gathering around Xi, because they may well like to improve relations with China as insurance. and most important of them all is India.

Why would India need as insurance to be a little bit closer to its neighbor and sometimes enemy China? Because President Trump's second administration has blown apart decades of bipartisan policy that brought India closer as a way of forming a bulwark against China. He's damaged those relations, analysts tell us, by imposing 50% tariffs on many exports, and ostensibly punishment for India being a major buy of Russian oil. And nearly every day, Trump administration insult India or its leader. Most recently, Trade Advisor Peter Navarro described India's a laundromat for the Kremlin on Fox News. Okay, so, I mean, I get the complaint, India has been buying Russian oil. The United States would rather that that stop.

And there's also this kind of personal beef between the prime minister and the president. But is India actually getting closer to China? result? This is interesting because China and India remember their neighbours. They share a border of over 2,000 miles through the Himalayas, although that border where it should lie remains in dispute. It's a fundamental tension between them and it remains unresolved. And there were some tangibles that happened before this meeting, but nothing at the summit. And that's perhaps a sign. Analyst tell us, look at the group picture. There's China's Xi, and then to his right, the leader of Kazakhstan and then Modi.

None of this is an accident. This is visual language to indicate that India comes to this meeting as being more vulnerable. On this, I spoke to Sadat Ramadi. He's a fellow at the Council for Strategic and Defence Research. It's based in New Delhi. And he says, look, a week in India may well strengthen China's hand vis-a-vis the United States. This is where I think the Trump administration could be making its mistake. If the US is still intent on balancing China,

It could be underestimating the ways in which this present disruption could force India towards a relationship with China. A relationship with China that is fundamentally unequal and has been made more unequal, he says, by Trump's tariffs and this daily browbeating. And effectively he says one way you can understand President Xi hosting this massive summit is that America has actually strengthened Beijing's hand in the world. NPRS-Dia Hadid, thanks so much. You're welcome, Steve. This is President Trump's first Labor Day since his return to the White House. Trump campaigned on the promise of providing America's workers with a renaissance. A little over six months in, how's that effort coming along?

NPR's Andrea Shoe covers labor. Hi there, Andrea. Hi. So what's the president saying about workers now? Well, as you might expect, Steve, he says they're doing great. At a cabinet meeting last week, he said, Wages are rising, factories are booming, and he took credit for all of this. Every policy of the Trump administration is designed to lift up the American worker, promote great-paying blue-collar jobs and to rebuild the industrial bedrock of our nation.

Now, Steve, factories aren't exactly booming. They've been in a bit of a slump over the last few months, but wages have risen this year, as they have over the last several years. And most people who want jobs are working. The unemployment rate remains fairly low at just over 4%. But there is a lot of uncertainty right now, a lot of points of tension in different parts of the workforce. And if you're out and about today, you might hear about some of this at mass protests that have been organized all over the country in all 50 states. The theme is workers over billionaires. What are the objections of the labor movement? Well, immigration, for one, the Trump administration has been cracking down not only on people who are in the U.S. illegally, but also on those who had legal status through different humanitarian programs that Trump is. now ending. And these new immigration policies are affecting workers, you know, everywhere on farms

in rural America, in factories in the Midwest, in health care, and hotels. Trump has claimed that immigrants are taking jobs from Americans, but in a lot of these industries, there aren't enough workers. So that's one issue I've heard about. But I'm also hearing from labor unions that represent blue-collar American workers, you know, those Trump courted during last year's presidential campaign. And let's be clear, a lot of blue-collar union type folks did vote for President Trump, but what are their unions saying now? Yeah, well, the unions are really worried that a lot of big infrastructure projects that got off the ground when Biden was president, that they are less of a sure thing. And this is

especially true in the renewable energy space. I spoke with Brent Booker. He's the general president of the laborers International Union of North America. And their members work in construction, you know, working on buildings and roads and bridges and clean energy projects. And here's how he described this moment. It's chaos. It's uncertainty. It's unpredictability. And Steve Booker is especially riled up right now about what's happened with a wind farm under construction off the coast of Rhode Island. It's called Revolution Wind. The Trump administration issued a stop work order on that project about 10 days ago. Yeah, the president also spoke about that at great length in some of his public appearances this past week. What's going on here? Yeah, well, Trump is no fan of windmills. He put a

moratorium on new wind projects already, but the administration said it was pausing this project because of national security concerns, fear of drone strikes and things like that. Now, Brent Booker, the union president, is furious about this. He said this project was approved long ago. Two million hours of work have been completed. Wow. Forty-five turbines already in the air, but now several hundred workers who were out over the water have been idled. Not only does that affect the individuals who are working on that, but an entire industry now is, you know, what's going to happen. Who's going to invest right now in renewable energy? And that just takes away future jobs and future opportunities. So that is his concern. It's the future. Right now, Brent Booker says most of his

members are working, but he credits the last administration and the last Congress for that, for the federal incentives that jump started those projects. With Trump, he doesn't like what he's seen so far, but he's still holding out hope that he will make good on his promises to workers. A lot of uncertainty. Andrea, thanks so much. Thanks, Steve. NPR's Andrea Shue. And that's our first for this Monday, September 1st. I'm Steve Inskip. And I'm Layla Faulted.

Your next listen. There's more stuff to say, and I closed it. There's more stuff to say. He sounded so final. I was like, I'm done. And that's our first for this Monday, September 1st. I'm Steve and Skip. And I'm Lela Falded.

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