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
Chapter 1: What are the key developments in the Ukraine ceasefire talks?
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 U.S. 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 Bullivant 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's 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.
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Chapter 2: What economic indicators suggest a potential U.S. recession?
Chapter 3: How are Americans responding to high egg prices?
And as egg prices soar, so does egg smuggling. It's Monday, March 17th. I'm Kate Bullivant 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's 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. 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.
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Chapter 4: What are Baidu's advances in AI technology?
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.
Chapter 5: How is China's economy performing amid U.S. tariffs?
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 U.S., recession fears are mounting. We look at all the indicators and just how certain an economic downturn is. That's 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 U.S. There are 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 significantly. 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 going to 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.
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