CONSUMER WATCH

May Vehicle Forecast: Sales “Cooling Off” to 15.9 million SAAR

From WardsAuto: U.S. Light-Vehicle Sales Cooling Off in May; Inventory Still Falling (pay content).  Brief excerpt:

With inventory set to continue declining month-to-month, and the cost to automakers of the tariffs more strongly kicking in by July, sales are likely to continue sequential weakness into the summer – unless automakers decide to eat most of the increased cost. Based on the North America production outlook for the next several months, most are not planning to eat a lot of the cost.
emphasis added

On a seasonally adjusted annual rate basis, the Wards forecast of 15.9 million SAAR, would be down 7.9% from last month, and up 0.5% from a year ago.

Car buyers rushed to buy over the previous couple of months to beat the tariffs.  There will be further payback in coming months.

Sales were 15.8M in 2024 and 15.5M in Q1’25. March was 17.8M and April 17.3.

Car sales volumes are only back to pre-pandemic levels but prices are up 32% for used and 20% for new vehicles, pre-tariffs…

Nvidia’s Huang Calls U.S. Export Controls a Failure, Praises Trump CEO says American curbs have pushed Beijing to accelerate development of its AI industry

Chief Executive Jensen Huang said U.S. export controls limiting the sale of advanced chips to China have been a failure, and commended President Trump for reversing a core part of the Biden administration’s policy.

The controls have galvanized China to push ahead with building its own artificial-intelligence technologies, and Nvidia has over the past four years lost market share to domestic competitors there, Huang said.

“The local companies are very talented and very determined, and the export controls give them the spirit, energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” Huang said in Taipei, where he is attending an industry conference. (…)

Huang said Wednesday that China was the second-largest computer market globally and would be a $50 billion AI market next year. Revenue from China, he said, could translate to tax dollars and jobs for the U.S. (…)

“America is not the only provider of AI technology,” he said. “If the United States wants to stay in the lead and the U.S. would like the rest of the world to build on American technology, then we would have to maximize AI diffusion, maximize the speed.”

Days after the rule was pulled, American chip makers including Nvidia unveiled deals to sell hundreds of thousands of the most powerful chips in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar during a visit by Trump and Huang to the region.

Still, Nvidia hasn’t gotten everything it wanted from Trump. It said in April it would take a $5.5 billion charge after the Trump administration put new controls on the export of an AI chip that the company had tailored for sale in China.

Huang reiterated his desire to keep serving China, citing its importance to the world’s AI ecosystem.

The Silicon Valley chip executive has crisscrossed the globe over the past month, trying to drum up sales of his AI processors and excitement for his vision of a future driven by AI supercomputers. He has drawn closer to governments around the globe because of the geopolitical importance of AI, standing by Trump’s side in the Middle East and meeting senior Chinese officials.

Bloomberg’s account is more explicit:

Nvidia Corp. chief Jensen Huang blasted the “failure” of US restrictions intended to help contain China’s technological ascent, calling on the White House to lower barriers to AI chip sales before American firms cede that market to up-and-coming rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co.

Huang called for policymakers to propel US AI technology by lowering export barriers aimed at curtailing the rise of a geopolitical rival. Some corners of Washington are receptive to that argument when it applies to countries like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, which have close ties to China — but Huang has so far failed to turn the tide of restrictions that specifically target the world’s second largest economy. (…)

Huang’s views align with the likes of White House AI adviser David Sacks, who has pushed for ensuring the world builds its AI tools and applications on an American “tech stack” — a full complement of hardware and services based on US know-how. The Trump administration is rescinding restrictions on Nvidia chip shipments to much of the world, though officials are drafting a replacement framework. (…)

“All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” Huang told reporters, in some of his harshest criticism yet of the US campaign. “The US should maximize the speed of AI diffusion. Because if we don’t, the competition will come.”

“China has 50% of the world’s AI developers, and it’s important that when they develop on an architecture, they develop on Nvidia, or at least American technology.” (…)

Huang reiterated the warning that if Nvidia can’t sell in China, Huawei and others will fill the gap.

“Power is quite cost-effective in China. And there’s plenty of land. And so the ban on H20 is not effective for that reason,” Huang said.

“They’ll just buy more chips from the startups, from Huawei, and others. And so I really do hope that the US government recognizes that the ban is not effective and give us a chance to go back and win the market.”

• Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Is Now a Geopolitical Superstar. It Comes With Risks.

(…) “His fortune and misfortune is that he created the most valuable technological input of the decade,” said Barath Harithas, a senior fellow at Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The danger is that his visibility becomes a liability. He could end up the fall guy if things unravel in the Gulf, and then face political heat for any perceived overreach in China.” (…)

Huang has pulled off the feat of staying friends with both the U.S. and China, despite tensions between the two superpowers.

In early April, he attended a $1 million-a-head dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and afterward some inside Nvidia were confident the company could keep selling its H20 chips in China, which had been tailored to comply with earlier U.S. regulations. Instead, the U.S. said a few days later it would restrict the sale of the H20 chips, which led Nvidia to take a $5.5 billion charge in the first quarter.

Within days of the new rule, Huang flew to Beijing and publicly reassured senior Chinese officials the company would “unwaveringly serve” the market there. Later, he met the mayor of Shanghai and left with the city’s blessing to open a new research and development center there.

Huang has repeatedly said China will be a powerhouse in global AI development and it would be folly for Nvidia to neglect the market. Each time new U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors have been introduced, Nvidia has adapted by downgrading its chips’ specs to continue selling to Chinese customers. (…)

Last week, the Commerce Department put out guidance against the use of American AI chips to train Chinese models and warned against the diversion of such silicon to China.

Harithas of CSIS said the perception of an American executive courting China ran against sentiment in Washington. “If he leans too far toward China with even a neutered chip variant, he risks crossing a red line, triggering public rebuke, or worse, legal blowback,” he said.

INFLATION WATCH

Macho-Pessimists Say Inflation’ll Be Back Tariffs will bring it with an unblinking certitude; the only question is when.

(…) The US has been slapping tariffs on a range of imports for a few months, and that’s already shown up in a sharp increase in the money being paid in import duty:

That is real money for Uncle Sam, and it has been paid by someone. But who, ultimately, will bear the price? (…)

Bloomberg’s survey of professional forecasters shows CPI estimates ticking up ever since the election. They’re only a little above 3%, so this isn’t extreme, but the shift is clear:

(…) Michigan has been logging inflation expectations by partisan identity since 2020, and the swing in the last few months has been spectacular. Trump Derangement Syndrome affects both ends of the spectrum, with Democrats expecting double-digit inflation, while Republicans think price rises could be abolished:

The depth of division is disquieting. But Michigan also polls independents, who suggest something more worrying for the administration. Their forecasts have shot up since the election, even as actual inflation has fallen. Reasonable people, then, expect tariffs to cause inflation:

What looks more encouraging on this chart is that import price inflation has declined slightly. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that tariffs won’t hit consumers, because US import prices exclude tariffs. Dario Perkins of TS Lombard in London says: “If Chinese exporters were absorbing them, US import prices would be falling much more sharply. Stability in these metrics means China ISN’T paying.” Apparently calm figures are a reason to expect the tariffs to show up in inflation soon. (…)

In recent posts, I have documented some inflation trends:

• Import prices excluding food and fuels rose 0.5% in April.
• Import prices for nonfuel industrial supplies and materials increased 0.8% in April.
• Import prices for capital goods increased 0.6%.
• Import prices for consumer goods increased 0.3% in April, the first monthly advance since October 2024.

Note that import prices exclude tariffs.

• Core goods PPI rose 0.4% after +0.3% in each of February and March. Last 3 months annualized: +4.1% following +2.0% in the previous 8 months when monthly gains were limited to 0.1-0.2%.

Note that Producer Prices exclude imports.

There is clearly price pressures in the goods pipelines.

Walmart, the king of low prices and a Goliath negotiator, warned last week that it plans to raise prices this month and early this summer, when tariff-affected merchandise hits its store shelves.

“The magnitude and speed at which these prices are coming to us is somewhat unprecedented in history,” Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said in an interview.

Shoppers could see prices rise by the end of May, “and then certainly much more in June,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey said today in a CNBC interview.

“We’re wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC today.

“Well, if you’ve got a 30% tariff on something, you’re likely going to see double digits [in price increases],” he later told Yahoo Finance.

• White House’s Miran Dismisses Inflation Risk From Tariff Hikes

(…) “Imports are only 14% of the economy — the ability of those types of things to move the needle on inflation are limited,” Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s Surveillance. “We have been introducing tariffs since day-one of this administration. And what we have seen is tariffs have started to come up” yet there’s “been no real meaningful effect on inflation.” (…)

Miran, who previously worked as a senior strategist at hedge fund Hudson Bay Capital, said that American importers “have flexibility,” with the potential to make products domestically or buy them from “other countries that treat us better.” That gives them leverage, he said. (…)

“But over time, we have the leverage — and that’ll allow us to force the burden of the tariffs onto other countries.” (…)

More importantly for Miran is that services inflation might be subdued enough to offset coming goods inflation. Slowing wages and lower oil prices are helping here.

• Oil prices rose after CNN reported that Israel may be preparing to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. The report, citing US intelligence, also said it wasn’t clear whether Tel Aviv has made a final decision. Last week, Donald Trump suggested the US is “getting close” to a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear activities, but later Iran’s top negotiator shared hopes for a “more realistic approach” to talks.

Donald Trump Plays Walmart CEO He goes full Kamala Harris in demanding that the retail giant not raise prices.

The WSJ Editorial Board:

Which American politician said the following?

Item one: “Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should . . . EAT THE TARIFFS, and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”

Item two: “After causing catastrophic inflation, Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls . . . Her plan is very dangerous because it may sound good politically . . . This is Communist; this is Marxist; this is fascist.”

If you guessed that both are statements by Donald Trump, you have broken the code on the bizarro world of the President’s second-term economic policies. Last year he blasted Kamala Harris’s proposal for price controls on groceries. But now he is attacking Walmart for warning that it will have to raises prices in the wake of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.

Mr. Trump’s flip-flop on price controls is a rebuttal of his own previous tariff claims. For months he’s said that foreign producers pay the full cost of tariffs. But now he’s admitting that Walmart, an American retailer, will have to eat some of the costs or pass them on to Americans.

Despite his business background, Mr. Trump doesn’t know much about retail. Walmart’s net profit margin is below 3%, so it doesn’t have much room to absorb the higher costs caused by tariffs. Retail competition is intense, and Walmart’s longtime comparative advantage has been lower prices.

Mr. President is telling a company how to run its business, along with a vague, implicit threat of retribution. Marxist? How would Mr. Trump react if Congress told him how much his family could charge for a Mar-a-Lago fee?

Mr. Trump is trying to duck the political fallout for his misguided tariff policy by blaming everyone else. Americans are too smart to fall for it.

Note: Canadian readers may have missed yesterday’s post. Worth reading in my humble opinion.

China Accuses US of Undermining Trade Talks With Warnings Against Huawei Chips

(…) The Commerce Department said in a statement last week that it was issuing guidance to make clear the use of Huawei Ascend chips is a breach of the US government’s export controls. The agency said it would also warn the public about “the potential consequences of allowing US AI chips to be used for training and inference of Chinese AI models.”

The US Commerce Department’s has since changed its wording to say the agency was issuing guidance about “the risks of using PRC advanced computing ICs, including specific Huawei Ascend chips,” stripping the “anywhere in the world” reference. The formal Commerce guidance, dated May 13, says using Huawei’s Ascend chips “risks” violating export controls.

Those updates weren’t enough to appease Beijing, which said Monday it had “negotiated and communicated with the US at all levels through the China-US economic and trade consultation mechanism, pointing out that the US’s actions seriously undermined the consensus reached at the high-level talks between China and the US in Geneva.”

While Chinese authorities noted the US had “adjusted” the wording of its guidelines around Huawei chips, it maintained it was still a “discriminatory measures” and demanded that the US “correct its mistakes.” (…)

China’s chief trade negotiator Li Chenggang attacked export controls on AI-related chips at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting last week in South Korea, saying a certain country was over-stretching the idea of national security, according to an official who attended the session. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer responded it was a measure to protect domestic manufacturing capabilities, the official said. (…)

Fed Officials Signal Rates Likely to Stay on Hold Until at Least September

Two Federal Reserve officials, including New York Fed chief John Williams, suggested policymakers may not be ready to lower interest rates before September as they confront a murky economic outlook.

“It’s not going to be that in June we’re going to understand what’s happening here, or in July,” Williams said Monday at a conference organized by the Mortgage Bankers Association. “It’s going to be a process of collecting data, getting a better picture, and watching things as they develop.”

The Fed’s next three meetings are in June, July and September. (…)

If the Trump administration’s ongoing trade negotiations drag on, “that starts to push much further into the summer, in which case we won’t actually know what the true effects are going to be for several months after that,” Bostic told Bloomberg’s Michael McKee.

Earlier Monday, Bostic noted policymakers would need to wait “three to six months” to see how things settle. He said it’s still possible that trade talks could move forward more quickly, lowering tariffs more than forecast.

“In that case we may be able to pull forward some of our actions, because there may not be as much that we need to do in terms of managing the price level,” he said.

Williams continued to stress that uncertainty was hindering not only policymakers, but also firms and households as they struggle to predict how tariffs and other policies from the Trump administration will reshape the US economy. (…)

Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson also emphasized a wait-and-see approach at the Atlanta Fed’s 2025 Financial Markets Conference Monday. He said it’s important for the Fed to make sure any potential increase in prices doesn’t evolve into a sustained rise in inflation.

“Given the level of uncertainty that we’re facing right now, I believe that it is appropriate that we wait and see how the policies evolve over time and their impact,” Jefferson said, adding that monetary policy is in a “very good place.”

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari — also speaking on Monday — noted the US economy was on solid footing in the early part of this year, and that the central bank has made a lot of progress on lowering inflation. He said tariffs, however, have thrown policymakers a “curve ball,” leaving policymakers on hold for now.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty that we’re trying to navigate,” Kashkari said. “It’s really just wait and see until we get more information.”

Chinese Smartphone Exports to US Plunge to Lowest Since 2011

Chinese shipments of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other mobile devices to the US dived to their lowest levels since 2011 in April, underscoring how the threat of US tariffs choked off the flow of big-ticket goods between the world’s two largest economies.

Smartphone exports slid 72% to just under $700 million last month, sharply outpacing an overall 21% drop in Chinese shipments to the US, detailed customs data showed on Tuesday. That highlighted the way the Trump administration’s tariffs campaign — peaking with 145% levies on Chinese goods — is disrupting tech supply chains and diverting electronics elsewhere. (…)

Last year, the three biggest US imports from China were smartphones, laptops and lithium-ion batteries, while liquid petroleum gas, oil, soybeans, gas turbines, and machines to make semiconductors were some of the most valuable US exports to China. (…)

BTW:

Goldman Sachs sees US domestic demand stalling, starting now:

This from Apollo:

Meanwhile:

Moody’s downgrade of the US credit rating from Aaa to Aa1 appears to have been influenced by the pending fiscal package. While we do not believe the downgrade would force any holders of Treasury securities to sell, it highlights the deteriorating fiscal outlook and comes at a time when markets are already attuned to fiscal risks. That said, Moody’s projection that the deficit will reach 9% of GDP in 2035 is roughly 2pp larger than our own.

Even though the bill would expand the deficit by slightly more than expected over the coming year, the effect is nevertheless much smaller than the increase in tariff revenue we expect. (GS)

Jamie Dimon Says Tariffs Might Inflict More Economic Pain Than Investors Realize The JPMorgan CEO warns of complacency in the markets at the bank’s investor day

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Monday he didn’t think the full impact of tariffs had passed through to the broader economy and warned that the stock market could slump as companies reckoned with the new costs for goods and supplies.

Dimon made the remarks during the bank’s investor day in New York, where he said the risks of an economic slowdown were underappreciated and said even the scaled-back level of President Trump’s tariffs were “pretty extreme.” (…)

“It’s an extraordinary amount of complacency,” Dimon said, noting that the last time the country saw 10% tariffs on all trading partners was 1971. (…)

Dimon said Monday that he thought stock markets could sell off by around 10% as companies lower their earnings estimates and investors reappraise the value of U.S. stocks. He also warned about a credit crunch that could ensnare companies used to easy financing.

“American asset prices, I still think they’re kind of high,” Dimon said. “I think credit today is a bad risk.” (…)

“We have what I consider almost complacent central banks that think they are omnipotent,” Dimon said. “They just set short-term rates.”

He also said it was unknown how other countries would respond to Trump’s tariffs and that some are already starting to cut trade deals with other nations.

• U.K. and EU Strike Trade, Security Deal Years After Brexit Agreement marks reset in relations in wake of war in Ukraine and Trump’s return

(…) Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission [said] “We in Europe stick together”. (…)

While the new security pact was a key aim of Starmer’s government when it took office last July, both the U.K. and the EU have intensified efforts to lock in new trade ties in recent months, as they seek to protect European companies from the impact of the Trump administration’s tariff hikes.

Brexit hasn’t worked out as its supporters hoped and is now unpopular in the U.K., with just three in 10 Britons saying it was a good idea to leave the EU, according to a poll by YouGov earlier this year. Since Brexit, U.K. exports to the EU have fallen 21% while imports have dipped 7%, according to the U.K. government. (…)

In the wake of Brexit, Britain had hoped to clinch a free-trade deal with the U.S., but that hasn’t happened. Earlier this month, Britain completed a trade deal with India. It then became the first country to reach a trade deal with the U.S., which removed some but not all of the tariffs Trump placed on U.S. trading partners in April.

The EU completed a preliminary deal with the biggest South American economies in January and has set its sights on a trade agreement with India by the year’s end.

Following up on Dimon’s statement that “credit today is a bad risk”, Almost Daily Grant writes (my emphasis):

Thus, domestic bank lending to private credit firms, buyout shops and other nonbank financial institutions (NBFIs) reached $1.2 trillion over the 12 months through March, Fitch Ratings found late last week, up a whopping 20% year-over-year. That dwarfs the 1.5% rise in commercial loan balances during the same stretch and compares to a 7% average annual commercial lending growth rate since 1947. 

Noting that such a rapid pace can portend future credit trouble, Fitch also relayed that the banks have generally secured ample collateral against those facilities, which should serve to keep a lid on defaults in the event of broad financial stress.

Good thing, as a recent analysis from the International Monetary Fund found that more than 40% of private credit borrowers posted negative free cash flow in 2024, up from 25% three years prior. Increased bank lending to NBFIs “could make the financial system more vulnerable to high levels of leverage and interconnectedness,” the IMF warned.

Yet for now at least, the private credit party continues apace, spurring intense competition to evaluate those transactions. Financial data firm Morningstar is working to muscle into the direct-loan ratings business, CEO Kunal Kapoor told Bloomberg Friday, pointing out that money managers are not obliged to consult ratings from at least two of the three major agencies, as is the case in public credit. “It’s a level playing field, and the rules have not been written in a way to favor the incumbents,” Kapoor said.

Indeed, a growing share of private loans feature no rating at all, analysts at UBS relayed last week, a phenomenon which could serve to pressure the rating agencies’ business model. The tally of such newly-issued, ungraded transactions topped 160 last year, UBS found, up from fewer than 10 in 2019, and is potentially poised to rise further as lenders look to allocate some $575 billion in so-called dry powder.

Some who do seek the rating agency imprimatur are particularly selective. The Wall Street Journal reports that credit firms that bundle collections of loans into collateralized loan obligations “are often able to choose the ratings provider for such issues,” a dynamic that invites conflicts of interest as the issuer pays for the evaluation while “the resulting grades can significantly affect the marketability of the rated securities.” 

One private credit industry executive likened the arrangement to students selecting the teacher who grades their work, quipping thus to the WSJ: “the only difference is, teachers aren’t paid based on giving out A’s.”

Retail Investors Drive Surge

It’s been six days in a row. Last week, both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 recorded perfect weeks, recording gains each day. (…)

What’s driving this? Bank of America’s Fund Managers Survey showed US equity allocation dropping to a two-year low. That’s evidence that stocks drew their strength from sources other than smart money or institutional investors:

Instead, look to the might of retail investors buying the dip. On Monday, when the S&P 500 initially tumbled 1% in reaction to the Moody’s downgrade, retail investors’ made $4.1 billion in net purchases of US stocks by midday to erase the losses, according to JPMorgan’s Emma Wu. Quite a counterbalance. (…)

Retail investors probably don’t have enough firepower to keep the rally going, so institutional investors will have to join from the sidelines. If there’s a cue to that effect, it lies in the analysis by HSBC Bank’s Duncan Toms, which shows institutional sentiment and positioning still sending the strongest contrarian buy signal since 2022. (…)

Retail investors probably don’t have enough firepower to keep the rally going, so institutional investors will have to join from the sidelines. If there’s a cue to that effect, it lies in the analysis by HSBC Bank’s Duncan Toms, which shows institutional sentiment and positioning still sending the strongest contrarian buy signal since 2022.

The outcome of the tax bill currently under House consideration could be the next game changer. Glenmede’s Jason Pride argues that the “decently large” bill could deliver a “stimulative” impact that would be harder for share institutional investors to ignore. (Although bond investors might also find it hard to ignore, which could be a problem…)

Trump’s deference to Putin stunned European leaders on call

Ukrainian President Zelensky and five other European leaders joined a conference call with President Trump immediately after his call with Vladimir Putin on Monday hoping to hear that Putin had agreed to a ceasefire — or the U.S. would impose penalties on him for refusing to do so.

• Instead, Trump said Putin had agreed to negotiate, stressed the U.S. wouldn’t be involved in those negotiations, and pushed back against the idea of imposing sanctions on Putin at the current time, two sources who were on the call and a third source briefed on the call told Axios.

Trump gave the impression he was getting closer to withdrawing from the issue altogether. Some leaders on the call seemed “surprised” or “shocked,” the sources said.

• “I think something’s going to happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away and they’re going to have to keep going. Again, this was a European situation, and should have remained a European situation,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office several hours after his calls. (…)

• Trump told the group Putin will present a “peace memo” with his terms for a ceasefire and for ending the war. A source on the call said Trump told Zelensky and the European leaders he asked Putin to present “something people can agree to” and not a proposal that will be rejected immediately.

• Zelensky said previous rounds of negotiations with Putin, including last week, didn’t produce anything and stressed that if Trump doesn’t push, Putin won’t move, the sources said.

Leaders on the call seemed surprised that Trump seemed relatively content with what he heard from Putin, and presented it as a new development, even though the Russian leader did not seem to have changed his position at all, the sources said.

Trump told the group that Russia and Ukraine can conduct bilateral direct negotiations without any third party mediators because the parties best understand all the details of the conflict. (…)

On the call, Finland President Alexander Stubb asked Trump what the next steps were. “I don’t know. Someone has to come out and say whether the negotiations are going well or badly, and then we’ll decide what to do,” Trump said.

One thing is clear: “I think something’s going to happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away and they’re going to have to keep going. Again, this was a European situation, and should have remained a European situation,”

FYI:

Putin thanked Trump for supporting the revival of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, emphasizing that such dialogue was essential for progress. He stated, “We have reached an understanding with the U.S. president that Russia will suggest and is prepared to collaborate with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum regarding a potential future peace agreement, outlining several positions including the principles of resolution and the timeline for a possible peace treaty”

Putin reiterated that Russia’s position in the negotiations remains unchanged and centers on “eliminating the root causes” of the war. He stated, “Russia’s stance is unmistakable. What is essential to us is addressing the fundamental causes of this crisis”

Putin did not agree to an unconditional or immediate ceasefire. Instead, he indicated that any truce would depend on reaching agreements that address Russia’s core demands. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov clarified there was “no timeline” for a ceasefire or for preparing a memorandum.

Putin’s conditions for peace continue to include Ukrainian acceptance of the loss of Crimea and four eastern regions, demilitarization of Ukraine, a permanent ban on NATO membership, and the so-called “denazification” of Ukraine. These demands have been repeatedly rejected by Kyiv.

“I would like to emphasize that, overall, Russia’s stance is transparent. Our primary goal is to eliminate the underlying causes of this crisis. We simply need to identify the most effective methods to progress towards peace.”

Clearly, no end in sight for this “European situation”. Trump will now address other “more important” matters.