A.M. Edition for Feb. 26. WSJ foreign correspondent Ian Lovett explains how Washington and Kyiv bridged differences over security guarantees and future mineral revenues to strike an agreement Ukraine hopes can reset relations with President Trump. Plus, House Republicans pass a budget plan, overcoming disagreements on the size of proposed spending cuts. And investing columnist Spencer Jakab unpacks the widening gap between the expected returns of large U.S. growth stocks and cheaper alternatives abroad. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s new Markets A.M. newsletter here—it’s free! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Trump said the new program would eventually provide a pathway for full citizenship. And companies like Apple could pay to get approval for high-skilled workers to live in the U.S. permanently.
It's Wednesday, February 26th. 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. The US and Ukraine have agreed to the terms of a mineral rights deal that could be signed by President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington as soon as Friday.
Zelensky had said for months Ukraine's allies could have access to the country's mineral resources, but that an agreement would need to include security guarantees. So how does the final deal measure up? I asked Journal foreign correspondent Ian Lovett.
Chapter 2: What are the details of the U.S.-Ukraine mineral rights deal?
So, the final deal is less ambitious, both for Ukraine and for the US, than I think the respective sides had potentially been hoping for. Last week, the US presented Zelenskyy with a draft that had some pretty aggressive economic demands in it. And the most notable of those was that the US would have...
das Recht auf zukünftige Prozesse von Mineralversorgungsentwicklung bis zu 500 Billionen Dollar, aber es hatte keine Sicherheitswahrnehmung für die Ukraine. Diese Verhandlung, im Gegensatz dazu, hat wirklich keine dieser Dinge.
Die ökonomischen Bedingungen sind nur, dass ein Fund eröffnet wird, der eine Teil der Prozesse von Mineralversorgungsentwicklung in der Ukraine in einen Fund einlegt, der dann in die Investitionen in die Ukraine geht. Ukraine will pay 50% into that fund and it's unclear exactly what kind of stake the US might have in that fund or in other kind of joint ownership projects.
That is set to be hashed out in future agreements. But there are also no security guarantees in this deal for Ukraine.
Chapter 3: Why is the mineral rights deal significant for Ukraine?
Given that, Ian, I would imagine it would be extra important for Ukrainian officials for this deal to become commercially viable. Analysts, you report, estimate the potential value of those minerals could amount to trillions of dollars. But what is the outlook for those critical minerals actually entering the US supply chain eventually?
Part of the appeal from the Ukrainian side of doing some sort of mineral rights deal with the US is that they hoped it would keep the US invested in Ukraine's future and keeping the country sovereign under Ukrainian control in a way so that whatever economic benefit the US stood to gain, that they would want to make sure that they could get that.
Chapter 4: What are the potential economic impacts of Ukraine's mineral resources?
Ukraine is believed to have deposits of at least 20 of the 50 minerals that the US government has designated as critical. A lot of these have never been developed. Up to about 40% of them are currently in parts of the country that are under Russian control. And so access to those, you know, we don't know when, if ever Ukraine might get control of those areas back.
Das war Foreign Correspondent Ian Leavitt in Kiew.
Chapter 5: How does the U.S. budget plan align with Trump's agenda?
House Republicans squeezed through a budget blueprint late last night, with all but one GOP lawmaker backing the framework for President Trump's tax, border and spending cut agenda.
The plan, which likely won't accommodate all of the tax reductions Trump wants, calls for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over a decade and will require significant cuts to Medicaid, an issue that's left House Republicans deeply divided.
While party leaders say the blueprint doesn't specifically mention Medicaid, more than half of the cuts it targets will come from the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the program. Though its passage is a sign Republicans can deliver major legislation despite holding slim majorities in Congress, the budget plan faces a complicated path ahead.
The Senate, which favors larger tax cuts, plans to alter the House blueprint rather than accept it. In a shake-up of American visa programs, President Trump plans to roll out a $5 million gold card visa that would allow wealthy people to buy permanent residency and potentially provide a pathway to full citizenship. Trump says the U.S.
Chapter 6: What changes are proposed for the U.S. visa program?
could sell a million gold cards and that they would enable companies like Apple to pay to get approval for highly skilled workers to live in the U.S.,
The new visas would replace the existing EB-5 visa that offers green cards to people who invest in the U.S., a program that has been plagued by cases of fraud, but which Journal-White House reporter Tarini Party said also enjoys strong bipartisan support in states that have benefited from it.
The next steps are unclear. The president has said that he is going to roll out the details of this program in the next few weeks. The EB-5 system was created by Congress, so it remains unclear how he is going to be able to make changes to an existing program without the approval of Congress.
Währenddessen hat die Trump-Administration eine Registrierung geschaffen, in der Immigranten in den USA illegal ihre persönliche Informationen oder Fälle in der Gefängniszeit anbieten müssen. Laut Dokumenten, die im Journal gesehen wurden, würden die Immigranten, insbesondere 14 und älteren Kinder, ihre Fingerprinten und Heimatadressen anbieten müssen.
Those who fail to do so could be fined up to $5,000 and sentenced to up to six months in prison. Previously, immigrants in the country illegally were committing a civil offense and could be detained and deported, but weren't considered to have committed a crime. Coming up, investing columnist Spencer Jacobs stops by to discuss the widening gap between the expected returns for large U.S.
growth stocks and cheaper alternatives abroad. That and other news moving markets after the break. Amerikas biggest growth stocks have a big expensive problem, so writes the Journal's investing columnist Spencer Jacob, who's been tracking data that compares the expected returns of those stocks against cheaper alternatives. And he's here to share what that data has been turning up.
Spencer, the premise of your latest column is that there's been a bit of unusual activity in the relationship between the performance of the S&P 500 and the MSCI IFA, IFA standing for Europe, Australasia and the Far East. So broadly here, US stocks versus non-US developed market stocks. And namely, it's that this relationship lately has been trending way outside of historic norms.
Break this down for us.
Ja, und es könnte ein Wachstum sein, weil es an einem Zeitpunkt kommt, als US-Kosten sehr teuer sind. Und das wurde ein bisschen übersteuert von Trumps Re-Election. Du hattest den Trump-Trad, Trump-Foria, was auch immer du es nennen möchtest. Und in den letzten paar Tagen ist es in den Rückgang gewechselt.
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