WSJ What’s News - White House Hails Progress on Ukraine Peace Talks

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

A.M. Edition for Nov. 24. After fears from Kyiv and U.S. allies that many of the points in President Trump’s peace plan conformed with key Russian demands, the White House says officials held constructive talks with Ukraine toward ending the war. Plus, markets and stock futures have bounced back, boosted by hopes the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next month. And ahead of a key budget announcement in Britain this week, WSJ’s U.K. bureau chief David Luhnow outlines the stakes for the Labour government, which is expected to raise taxes and cut spending. Caitlin McCabe hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly home, isn't home where we all want to be. Reba here for Realtor.com, the pro's number one most trusted app. A dream home isn't a dream home if it comes with a nightmare commute. That's why Realtor.com has real commute, so you can search by drive time. Download the Realtor.com app today because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com. Pros number one most trusted app based on August 2025 proprietary survey. American and Ukrainian officials tout progress on a peace plan to end the war with Russia

following talks in Geneva. Plus, global stocks start the week on a brighter note as traders increase bets on a December rate cut. And Brits brace for higher taxes as the UK's labor government prepares its latest budget. Markets have been getting a little nervous about the demands by Britain for borrowing. So they're having to tighten their belt. if you look at it like a business or a household, their costs are going way up, but their revenues are not. So they need to address that. It's Monday, November 24th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for

the Wall Street Journal, and here's the AM edition of What's News. The top headlines and business stories moving your world today. The White House says it has made progress toward ending the war in Ukraine, following what it called constructive talks with Ukrainian officials. U.S. and Ukrainian representatives met in Geneva over the weekend to discuss President Trump's proposed 28-point plan to end the war, which raised alarm among U.S. allies who said it could infringe on Ukraine's sovereignty and security. Although not providing specific details, a statement from the White House said the talks had resulted in a, quote, updated and refined peace framework. The challenge for Kiev had been in trying to avoid another confrontation with Trump while finding a way to rework the U.S.

plan, which was drafted with the involvement of Russian economist and Kremlin confidant, Kirol Demetriov. The U.S. delegation, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, suggested that the previous deadline of Thanksgiving, given by Trump, had some flexibility and that the priority was getting the deal done. Whether it's Thursday, whether it's Friday, whether it's Wednesday, whether it's Monday of the following week, we want it to be soon because people are going to, between today and the time we deal with us, more people are going to die. More destruction is going to happen. Our goal is to end this war as soon as possible. We need a little more time.

Ukrainian see the proposal as a capitulation to Moscow, as it would require Kiev to give up territory to Russia, block its ambitions to join NATO, and limit the size of its military. The talks come as President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to face political trouble at home due to a corruption scandal, which has sparked fury across Ukraine. Both Hezbollah and the Israeli military have confirmed the death of a senior Hezbollah commander during a strike in Beirut yesterday. The Lebanese health ministry said five people were killed and a further 28 people injured in the attack in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had approved the strike, describing the senior commander, Haysam Ali Tabatabai as Hezbollah's chief of staff. According to the U.S. State Department, Tabatabai previously commanded the special forces in Yemen and Syria. The strike adds more pressure to the increasingly shaky ceasefire. a deal between the two countries as Israel responds to what it says is Hezbollah's attempts to rebuild its ranks. Global stock markets are kicking off a new trading week on more solid footing after a volatile downturn last week. Indexes in Asia and Europe are rising as are U.S. stock futures,

while Bitcoin has inched higher to trade above $85,000 again. At least part of that optimism is tied to rising expectations that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates next month, after New York Fed President John Williams said Friday that such a move may be warranted to bring rates closer to a neutral setting. Today's rebound is a welcome sign for investors and their portfolios after fears of an AI bubble sent the tech-focused NASDAQ composite falling 6.1% over the last three weeks. It's steep as such decline since April when fears about President Trump's tariffs took hold. This will be another busy week for markets with the delayed release of the producer price index, which is the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. Telestimo's co-host of WSJ's Take On the Week podcast says that there are a number of key earnings reports to watch as well.

We've got Dell Technologies, for example, that is a company that has in the past talked about how AI could be a driver of its business. So we'll continue to get reads on AI directly. In addition, we're getting a bunch of updates from retailers and consumer staples companies like J.M. They, of course, make a lot of things you find in the grocery store. And we've got a lot of retailers like coals and Abercrombie and Fitch. We also just this past week had earnings from Target and Walmart. And while the headline number on Walmart was pretty good and increased in same store sales, I thought that some of their comments about what they were seeing under the hood were interesting.

And what they said was that they were seeing a lot of increased market share. That is, people are coming from other stores to shop at Walmart. They were seeing weakness, some weakness starting to form. in their lower-income consumers, and they were seeing a bigger pickup from higher-income consumers. As Tellis points out those Under the Hood comments from Walmart highlight a key sentiment that many Americans are feeling right now. They're just plain weary. After nearly five years of high prices and a lot of uncertainty over what's to come, WSJ economics reporter Rachel Wolf says that middle-income consumers, in some cases, are joining lower-income Americans in scaling back

purchases. We looked at the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Survey in which middle income respondents were feeling really not so great about their financial situation. 44% of middle income respondents said their personal finances were worse than they were a year ago, and only 23% said they were better. And those felt worse off, overwhelmingly said it was because of higher prices. Rachel noted that costs for goods and services are now 25% above where they were in 2020, with certain essentials like coffee, ground beef, and car repairs up markedly this year. She says frustrations over that are increasingly spilling into politics. We saw that cost-of-living issues really pushed voters this month toward candidates who promised to

address what many now see as an affordability crisis. We also know that similar issues plagued Joe Biden's re-election campaign last year and have recently weighed on Trump's approval ratings. For more on how consumers are feeling right now, we've left a link to Rachel's story in our show notes. And check out this week's episode of WSJ's Take On the Week, which digs into this topic too, wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up, speaking of rising costs, Britain's government has been weighing all options to boost sluggish growth. With a key budget later this week, tax hikes are looming. That story, after the break. At Desjardin, we speak business.

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Going now across the pond where Britons are nervously waiting for the center-left labor government to unveil its latest budget on Wednesday. Economists are expecting Treasury Chief Rachel Reeves to announce a mix of tax rises and spending cuts as she seeks to rebuild the UK's deteriorating finances. Just last week, the UK's fiscal watchdog said government borrowing in the first seven months of the fiscal year overshot forecasts, hitting its highest level since the pandemic. The journal's UK bureau chief, David Luno, has been looking ahead to the budget, and he says potential announcements might include a tax on electric vehicles, a shake-up of property taxes. And for wealthy Americans that have settled across the pond, it's worth noting that this could include a 20% exit tax for millionaires looking to leave the UK. David, let's start with a bit of background here. The UK economy

isn't exactly doing well, and you'd think Reeves would want to put more money into people's hands to boost spending. That's a good point. But the government has really already been doing that arguably since the pandemic. And now it's running budget deficits that are pretty big. At the end of last year, it was 5.8% of GDP. It's a little smaller than the U.S. is, which is also big. But Britain, unlike the U.S., doesn't have the dollar as a reserve currency. So it's a little bit more subject to other people's willingness to lend it money in pounds. And markets have been getting a little nervous about the demands by Britain for borrowing. So they're having to tighten their belt. Last year, Reeves said she was going to do a one-time tax rise and they were going to be done.

Now, this year, she's back for more. And essentially, that's because the UK faces the same kind of constraints that other European governments face. They have aging populations. They have higher defense spending. They have much higher interest costs from higher interest rates. So basically, if you look at it like a business or a household, their costs are going way up, but their revenues are not. So they need to address that. And so, David, what do we actually know so far about her budget plans? Well, we know too much and too little. It's been a bit of a mess so far. The government promised during its campaign two years ago, basically not to raise taxes on working people. Americans will recall George Bush back in the 80s saying no new taxes, read my lips. So in trying to

stick to that. Last year, they introduced a bunch of other tax rises, including on employers, which wasn't good for growth. This time, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, announced that she would consider an increase in income taxes, which markets liked because it's kind of a simple and clean way to raise revenue. But there was an outcry about the U-turn on the election pledge. So now there's been a U-turn on the U-turn, and everyone is basically dizzy. We're back to a bunch of smaller, assorted increases, kind of a death by a thousand cuts. As you mentioned, she's talking about a tax on homes worth more than two million pounds, a per mile tax on electric vehicle cars driving, taxing worker contributions to their retirement savings, and exit tax for millionaires and various

others. So it's sort of a grab bag, and I think the key is markets will be saying, well, is this a good, sustainable way to raise revenue? I want to talk about markets in just a second, but let's first get to the people. How do we expect Brits to respond to this? Well, Brits, like everybody, don't like tax increases. And neither do they like spending cuts. I think this budget's going to be much more weighted on tax increases than spending cuts. The Starmer government tried to reform welfare really on the margin earlier this year. And it failed due to a rebellion by its own labor backbenchers. So that's left it with really leaning on taxes as the way to go. Definitely people won't like it, but they're trying to design these essentially with the message of, hey,

we're just taxing the rich. So polls show that many people do like the idea of raising taxes on what they call mansion tax homes over two million pounds. That'd be about $2.4, $2.5 million, which might not be as big as an American might expect. You hit that price in London pretty quickly. But yeah, people won't be happy, but they'll be glad that the income tax isn't going up. And, David, going back to markets, what should we be looking out for in terms of market reaction. Well, in order to make the people happy that income taxes weren't going up, the big gamble here is that you make the markets unhappy. So I think it's going to be key to watch how the markets do, whether borrowing costs keep climbing for the UK. The UK has the highest

borrowing costs of any rich country. So that means it's just going to sort of, you want to avoid this sort of doom loop where you have ever higher borrowing costs, which again makes you pay more money, which lowers economic growth, and then the investors want to charge you even more for more debt. So that market reaction is going to be pretty crucial to see if people, if investors kind of believe that this is now on a sustainable path. That's Journal UK Bureau Chief David Luno. Thanks, David. It's a pleasure. And that's it for What's News for this Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer was Daniel Bach. And I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with the new show. Until then,

thanks for listening.