WSJ What’s News - Trump Calls Out Putin Over Ukraine

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

A.M. Edition for July 9. As Russia intensifies its assault on Ukraine, President Trump is losing his patience with Vladimir Putin. Journal correspondent Matthew Luxmoore says the president is now considering sending an additional patriot missile system to Kyiv. Plus, the Trump administration is moving to ban Chinese buyers from purchasing U.S. farmland over national security concerns. And interest groups are spending big on television advertising in West Palm Beach, Florida in a bid to capture President Trump’s attention. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver.

Putin's lip service to peace falters as President Trump loses patience with the Russian leader. Plus, the U.S. moves to ban China from buying American farmland. Food security, just like energy resilience, just like where we get our water, that's all national security, especially in a contingency. And advertisers target Mar-a-Lago's airwaves in a bid to get just one person's attention. It's Wednesday, July 9th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

If the Trump administration has its way, buyers from China will no longer be able to purchase American farmland, following years of warnings from state and federal lawmakers that it could use the land to facilitate spying or wield influence over the U.S. food supply chain. Here was Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. American agriculture is not just about feeding our families, but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research, and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us.

Rollins said the government is also ratcheting up scrutiny on existing land owned by Chinese buyers and looking at ways to potentially claw back prior purchases. China has downplayed U.S. concerns as overblown, with an embassy representative in D.C. saying Chinese companies' investments had created jobs and economic growth. According to Agriculture Department data, Chinese-owned entities hold roughly 0.02 percent of American farmland, or under 300,000 acres. President Trump is dialing up his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling a cabinet meeting yesterday that the U.S. gets a lot of BS thrown at us by Putin.

I censored that. And that a lot of what Putin says, while nice, turned out to be meaningless. I asked journal foreign correspondent Matthew Luxmore what to make of those comments. He's losing his patience. He really hoped that Putin would show a willingness to end this war and at least make some kind of concession to the Ukrainian side in these negotiations that have been brokered by the Trump administration. That of course hasn't happened. Russia's position has hardened even over time. Of course, the Russian side, as they say publicly, and as Putin also knows himself, Trump is

quite prone to changing his position on a regular basis. Some Russian officials have responded to the recent comments by Trump by pointing to the fact that he has kind of flip-flopped over Ukraine and Russia. So I think they will be watching cautiously and will not be taking any drastic measures or making any drastic statements in response to Trump. Despite that, Matthew, I'm curious if we are seeing a change of heart on Trump's part, how would we measure that? I think two things. The imposition of possible new sanctions on Russia and the provision

of a new patriot system to Ukraine or other weapons are definitely things that we should be watching. And partly because those are the two things that Trump has quite strongly hinted he is considering. And the Wall Street Journal has of course reported that he is considering sending another Patriot missile system to Ukraine, which is direly needed in the country right now amid these constant attacks on Ukrainian cities by Russia. The sanctions issue is of course one that Trump has been putting off for many months now despite the fact that a lot of Republicans have pushed him to consider this move. But of course now I think it is becoming quite clear to him that Russia is not willing to

make concessions on Ukraine. And that is why he is saying that he's quite seriously considering signing this sanctions bill that has been proposed to him. And depending on what the sanctions will be, that is something definitely that Russia doesn't want. That was Journal of Foreign Correspondent Matthew Luxmore. Western Europe experienced its warmest June on record, as most of Spain, Portugal, France, and the UK sweated through a pair of major heatwaves. That is according to data from the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service, which found

it was the third warmest June globally, with the U.S., as well as parts of Canada, Asia, and Antarctica registering the most above average temperatures. Last month's European heatwaves killed an estimated 2,300 people, according to a UK-led study. And the search for missing individuals after flash floods on Friday swept through Texas Hill Country has now transitioned from one of rescue to recovery. So far, Texas has confirmed 109 deaths, with Governor Greg Abbott saying yesterday there are still 161 known missing people in Kerr County alone.

We will not stop until every missing person is accounted for. Emergency services are facing increasing pressure over why victims weren't better warned of the impending disaster. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning of a catastrophic potential for loss of life hours before the Guadalupe River rose, but some officials, including the Kerr County Sheriff, weren't notified until hours later. Coming up, oil fields in South America are booming, drawing big investment from the U.S. and Elon Musk's chatbot Grok publishes a series of anti-Semitic posts on X.

Those stories and more after the break. Oil companies like Exxon and Chevron are investing big in South America, with countries like Brazil, Guyana, and Argentina forecast to drive more than 80% of growth in global oil production outside the OPEC bloc over the next five years. Journal of Brazil correspondent Samantha Pearson spoke to our Kate Bullivant about the continent's prospects for becoming the next big oil region. Yeah, so we're really seeing over the past few years a boom in oil production in South America.

That's mainly being led by Brazil, which is by far the biggest producer. Petrobras, which is a state-run oil company here in Brazil, is investing $111 billion by 2029, mainly in projects offshore near the mouth of the Amazon River, but also down the Rio de Janeiro. But also Argentina. Argentina is a success story at the moment for oil production. It's at the highest in two decades. And there are other countries, so Guiana, it's a small country, not many people, but it's on the cusp of becoming the world's largest

producer per capita. And the industry is also very excited about Suriname, which is next to Guiana, shares a lot of the same geology, and there's a lot of excitement about offshore discoveries there as well. So really the whole region, South America, you know, is seeing a is seeing a boom in the past few years and it's looking pretty good for the next decade or so. And this boom in South American oil production, it marks a stark turnaround from the past decade. Precisely. If you look at the main players, you know, over the past couple of decades of decades obviously Venezuela comes to mind it's got the biggest oil reserves in

the world and Bolivia as well but obviously state intervention more or less destroyed the oil industry in both countries so in 2017 Venezuelan oil production essentially collapsed when Maduro, Nicolas Maduro the authoritarian leader when he tightened control of the industry. And we saw something similar in Bolivia as well. And now we're seeing a very different story with these countries such as Brazil. We're actually pretty investor friendly, leading this new boom. So I think that's why people are excited because they see this as a long term trend in Brazil, that I think there's very little risk that they're going to reverse those policies and follow Venezuela's path. So I think that's where a lot of the optimism is coming from.

So Samantha, in terms of foreign investment, what levels of interest are we seeing from US oil companies? So yeah, it's definitely attracting US interest. Exxon, it's been involved in the Amazon auction recently, Chevron as well. Exxon is also a big player in Guyana. And I think part of that is obviously the US has been a huge producer of oil. As you know, it's overtaken Russia and Saudi Arabia. But there's a time limit on that because obviously the shale fields that have driven a lot of this production are maturing and these oil companies are looking for new opportunities elsewhere. So another big plus for the region is that oil

production here is relatively inexpensive and also the production process itself generates lower emissions than the global average. So in Brazil's case that's basically because the oil fields are so gigantic so you need kind of fewer bits of infrastructure for the same amount of oil. And also, Brazil's oil tends to have fewer impurities. Nowadays, when oil companies are still having to produce oil, but they want to explain how they're doing so in a more environmentally friendly way, it's actually pretty attractive. So that's another thing that's definitely drawing foreign companies to the region.

And I wonder, Samantha, does this investment into oil exploration in the Amazon or other places in South America, does it reflect some sense that the region is a safer bet than other oil-rich locations in, for instance, the Middle East or Russia? I mean, this is a terrible moment really for the other major oil producers. The Middle East, it hasn't necessarily affected production in a huge way, but obviously there's a lot of uncertainty about that and oil always pops up in these geopolitical rows and battles that are going on at the moment. But in Russia, it's definitely had a huge impact on production.

And there you have South America, you know, quietly increasing oil production. So I think if the US is looking, you know, where is the oil going to come from in two decades or, you know, even 15 years or something, I think South America is pretty stable and kind of a convenient place to be drilling oil. So I think that's a positive point for the region, definitely. Well, we'll be keeping an eye on this going forward. Samantha, thanks so much for your time. Thanks very much. The COO of Apple, Jeff Williams, is stepping down from his role after roughly a decade as the tech giant's second-in-command under CEO Tim Cook. Williams will be replaced later this

month by Sabi Khan, a key architect of Apple's supply chain, who will be tasked with further diversifying Apple's production away from China to other Asian countries, including India. Elon Musk's chatbot Grok has come under fire after posting a series of anti-Semitic posts on X, its second flurry of controversial responses to users in recent months. XAI said it's actively working to remove the inappropriate posts and that it has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. Several of Grok's posts have since

been deleted. And finally, in West Palm Beach, Florida, television advertisers have increasingly been targeting an audience of one. A journal analysis of advertising data since President Trump's inauguration in January finds that interest groups have spent roughly $2 million on ads in the Mar-a-Lago City as well as additional funds solely in Washington, D.C. that appear to be meant for the president's eyes only. Journal Enterprise reporter Maggie Severn says that since Trump took office, West Palm

Beach ranks third among markets for national-focused issue spending on broadcast and cable TV ahead of larger markets like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Chicago. Some examples that we talk about in the story are there are pharmaceutical companies that had targeted ads down there about a big issue for them called the pill penalty. The cure for cancer is closer than ever. But the Biden pill penalty is forcing researchers to abandon breakthroughs that could save millions of lives Only President Trump can fix it the aluminum industry which had a huge stake in tariffs Did an ad down in West Palm Beach and in several cases these ads actually directly address the president or praise the president Talking about what a good job he's doing So one example is this ad that was run by automakers. So my goal is to see us auto manufacturing even greater than it was in its prime.

The American Automotive Association put up an ad that at the end of it said, Mr. President, together we can drive innovation and American manufacturing. Let's do it. It's hard to see that ad that directly addresses Trump and think it is anything else than what it is, which is an attempt to sway the president through the TV airwaves. And that's it for What's News for this Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivant and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show.

Until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.