WSJ What’s News - Trump and Putin to Hold Ceasefire Talks

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

A.M. Edition for Mar. 17. President Trump says he will speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, as Washington pushes to end the war in Ukraine. Plus, is the U.S. headed for a recession? WSJ’s Justin Lahart breaks down the indicators. And, with egg prices still stubbornly high, more Americans are now smuggling in eggs from Mexico and Canada. Kate Bullivant hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. In a bid to end the war in Ukraine, President Trump says he will speak with Russian President

Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, plus head-scratching on Wall Street as economists try to figure out whether the US might fall into a recession. So these measures of uncertainty, they've risen to the highest level ever except for COVID. And what this type of uncertainty does is it makes it very hard for businesses to plan. And as egg prices soar, so does egg smuggling. It's Monday, March 17th. I'm Kate Bulevant for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

President Donald Trump is planning to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he pushes to end the war in Ukraine. Trump made the announcement to reporters on board Air Force One late Sunday evening. A lot of work has been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end. Maybe we can, maybe we can't, but I think we have a very good chance. When pressed on what concession he'll be seeking from Putin to get a deal done, Trump said they'll be talking about land and power plants as part of those conversations to bring the

war to a close, describing it as, quote, dividing up certain assets. Moscow has insisted on holding on to at least 18% of Ukrainian territory it already controls, an area roughly equivalent in size to Virginia. It also expressed intentions to reverse policies that have sidelined Russian cultural influence in Ukraine and preclude the country's membership in NATO. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has deported alleged Venezuelan gang members despite a court order that temporarily blocked it from doing so. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, during a hearing early Saturday evening, issued an oral order blocking President Trump from using a centuries-old wartime law to deport non-citizens held in U.S. custody

after hearing that two aircraft believed to be carrying Venezuelan deportees took off from U.S. territory. Boasberg said that, quote, any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, end quote. A third plane took off after the order was issued. The judge subsequently issued a written order that didn't explicitly mention planes already in the air,

something White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt seemed to point to, saying the written order and the administration's actions do not conflict. Typically, lawyers view orders issued orally by judges as carrying full legal weight. According to a person familiar with the matter, administration officials are expecting a fight at the Supreme Court soon. The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the State Department didn't respond to a request for comment.

State Department didn't respond to a request for comment. Turning to market news now and Chinese tech giant Baidu has released a new artificial intelligence model, which the company claims can rival DeepSeek's AI model across various benchmarks at an even lower cost. Baidu said its Ernie X1 reasoning model can support advanced search, AI image generation and web page reading. Deepsea caused a market frenzy earlier this year with its R1 model, performing on par with OpenAI's GPT-4O model at a fraction of the cost and without relying on the most advanced chips. Meanwhile, China's economy has gotten off to a surprisingly good start this year, giving

Beijing some breathing room as it braces for the impact of US tariffs. Hannah Miao covers China's economy for us and says the numbers come a day after Beijing released a policy plan to expand domestic consumption in a bid to replace its largely export-driven growth. China on Monday reported that retail sales, which is a measure of consumer spending, accelerated for the first two months of the year. Industrial production and investments also grew more than expected. On the downside, we did see that the unemployment rate jumped to the highest level in two years,

as well as the property market continues to really struggle as measured by things like home sales, new construction starts. And in general, many economists' reactions to the data released on Monday is that it shows that China is on relatively solid footing, but it's too early to tell exactly how Trump's tariffs could impact the economy. Coming up, China's economy may be on solid footing for now, but in the US, recession fears are mounting. We look at all the indicators and just how certain an economic downturn is. That's after the break. after the break. President Trump declined to rule out a recession when speaking on Fox News last week.

However, amid tariffs, funding cuts and immigration restrictions, recession talk hangs heavy in the air. And as major economic data hasn't yet begun to fully capture Trump's time in office, WSJ economics reporter Justin Layhart, along with his colleague Paul Kiernan, have been looking for other signs of a recession. Justin, walk us through some of the recession indicators that you've been looking at. Yeah, a lot of it is just keeping our ear to the ground on the news, watching what companies are saying in conference calls, looking at basically every front page in the US. There's some very good measures of

uncertainty taken from textual analysis of newspapers. Those have really shot higher. We're looking at consumer confidence measures. The Michigan sentiment number, for example, has deteriorated. And we're looking at high frequency spending data, data from places like Bank of America, what are their customers doing with their card purchases? So we're seeing softness all around. And there's a real question of what that is gonna turn into. And that uncertainty also affecting businesses.

So these measures of uncertainty, they've risen to the highest level ever except for COVID. And what this type of uncertainty does is it makes it very hard for businesses to plan. And we're also seeing that in comments from businesses, we're seeing that in surveys that are taken by Federal Reserve Banks and others. People are quite forthrightly saying tariffs. We don't know what's happening. We're not sure how high the rates are going to be, what they're going to be on, where they're going to be. So even a business that is maybe excited about Trump's deregulatory agenda, it makes it very

hard to say, well, okay, where am I going to hire people? Where am I going to invest? And that can freeze things for a moment, and that's not good for the economy. Okay, so business leaders are worried. But what about consumers? So we have seen these measures of consumer confidence deteriorate, especially when it comes to asking consumers about what they think about the job market. If they think unemployment is going to be going up, that is often a sign that consumer spending is going to flag a bit. And we have seen that people are worrying more about the job market.

Some people obviously are quite worried if you're a federal worker. Many of them have lost their jobs. Many of them are worried that they're going to lose their job. Yeah, I was interested when reading your piece, why the job market was an area that you looked into to gauge whether or not recession was around the corner, because the job market is still strong going off February's unemployment rate, coming in low by historical standards. The job market is really important. It also tends to lag a lot of the things that happen

when a recession hits. So by the time the job market has really cracked, it's game over. But when people start worrying about the job market, when you start to see it fraying a little bit, that can cause problems with consumer spending, right? And that can of course have a snowball effect, right? Once you've ran in spending, then businesses aren't making more. Walmart, for example, has said that people are buying smaller package sizes.

That's often something that they do if they're worried about their money running out. We're even seeing people are buying more little liquor bottles instead of the big ones, right? That's again, something that people do when they're starting to worry a little bit about what's going on. The transportation sector looks like it's having trouble. Plane tickets are in especially tough sell. Delta Airlines cautioned of that last week. The good news so far is the February job report was good, it was solid, and also importantly,

jobless claims. These are initial jobless claims for people filing for unemployment. Those have stayed low. And typically what we see when things get quite bad, when a recession is hitting, you see those really start to move up. And if these trends and behaviours continue, does that mean a recession is definitely on the cards, or is there a way out, so to speak? You always have to be careful with recession calls. There are always things that can go wrong, and it is easy to cherry pick and decide that the world is going to end,

and it doesn't. The US economy has been very dynamic, has been very resilient. If you remember, during the Biden administration, people were sure, they were certain that a recession was coming and nothing like that ever occurred. This could be a repeat. So what's really important is watching all of these indicators, not just ones that might fit with our personal narrative, to really understand what's going on. And that's what we're trying to do. Okay, I guess we'll just have to keep watching and wait and see. Justin, thanks very much.

Thank you. weighing on American consumers is the price of eggs. Data from the Labour Department shows that a dozen grade A large eggs averaged $5.90 last month, a record compared with just $3 a year earlier thanks to an outbreak of avian flu. And as journal reporter Jean Whelan explains that so-called egg-flation has resulted in customs and border protection agents confiscating more contraband eggs than ever before as people crossing the Canadian and Mexican border stock up. Egg interceptions are up 36 percent nationwide compared with the previous year and in certain parts of Texas they're up even more. They've risen by 54 percent near Laredo. And in San Diego, they're up an incredible 158%. Most people arriving at the border

don't know that bringing in eggs is prohibited. They openly declare the eggs when they arrive. They're not trying to hide them. And they're told by customs agents that it's not allowed. Every once in a while, customs agents say they do encounter someone who is trying to hide their eggs. And then they have issued some $300 fines in recent months along the Texas border. And that's it for what's news for this Monday morning.

Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Sandra Kilhoff and I'm Kate Boulevent for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.