What C.E.O.s Really Think About Trump’s Tariffs

Summary

Podcast Summary: "What C.E.O.s Really Think About Trump’s Tariffs"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Daily
• Host/Author: The New York Times
• Episode: What C.E.O.s Really Think About Trump’s Tariffs
• Release Date: August 11, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Daily, hosted by Natalie Kitroeff, Andrew Ross Sorkin, a renowned business reporter and DealBook editor, delves deep into the sentiments of CEOs regarding President Trump’s implementation of sweeping global tariffs. The discussion explores the onset, impact, and future implications of these tariffs on the U.S. economy and global trade relations.

Current Status of Trump's Tariffs

Andrew Ross Sorkin provides an overview of the current tariff landscape, highlighting the significant changes and their immediate effects on businesses.

• Tariff Implementation:
  "President Trump has implemented sweeping global tariffs on more than 90 countries, including major economies like Japan, the UK, and the European Union. This is probably the biggest deal ever reached in any capacity, trade or beyond trade."
  (04:07)

• Tariff Rates:
  "Goods from the EU and Japan are now subject to 15% tariffs, while those from China face 30%, with potential increases up to 125%. India is currently at 50%."
  (04:45 - 05:16)

CEO Reactions and Sentiments

Sorkin reveals that despite initial panic, CEOs are now adopting a more composed stance towards the tariffs, viewing them as the new normal.

• Calm Acceptance:
  "Surprisingly, CEOs are calmer than expected. They're recognizing that tariffs are here to stay and are planning accordingly."
  (06:19)

• Market Response:
  "After an initial market freakout in April, the stock market has stabilized, indicating that investors are adapting to the new tariff reality."
  (06:49)

Adaptation Strategies Employed by CEOs

CEOs are employing multiple strategies to navigate the challenging tariff environment, focusing on lobbying and supply chain reconfiguration.

• Lobbying Efforts:
  "Companies have been making pilgrimages to Washington, trying to persuade lawmakers and the President to reconsider the tariffs, albeit unsuccessfully."
  (08:25)

• Supply Chain Adjustments:
  "Executives are rethinking their supply chains, attempting to move manufacturing out of affected countries or stockpiling goods to mitigate tariff impacts."
  (08:41 - 09:22)

Impact on Pricing and Consumer Behavior

One of the most perplexing aspects discussed is the lack of immediate price hikes despite the increased costs imposed by tariffs.

• Price Stability:
  "Many CEOs are choosing to absorb the additional costs rather than pass them on to consumers to avoid losing market share."
  (09:33 - 10:22)

• Fear of Presidential Scrutiny:
  "Raising prices could provoke public criticism from the President, as seen when Amazon was targeted after contemplating tariff-related price increases."
  (10:44 - 12:09)

Long-Term Economic Implications

The conversation transitions to the sustainable strategies CEOs might adopt moving forward, acknowledging that the current approach of absorbing costs is not viable long-term.

• Inevitable Price Increases:
  "It's only a matter of time before companies have to raise prices to maintain profitability, despite their reluctance."
  (17:36 - 18:29)

• Supply Chain Realignment:
  "While some companies are investing heavily in domestic manufacturing, the logistical challenges mean this is a long-term solution."
  (20:50 - 21:48)

Artificial Intelligence as an Economic Counterbalance

Andrew introduces the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a significant driver sustaining the U.S. economy amidst the tariff-induced strains.

• AI Investments:
  "Massive investments in AI and data centers by companies like Microsoft are injecting substantial capital into the economy, offsetting some negative impacts of tariffs."
  (22:11 - 23:37)

Historical Context and Future Outlook

Sorkin places the current tariff scenario within a broader historical framework, suggesting its unprecedented nature and lasting effects.

• Historical Comparison:
  "The current tariff situation is unlike anything seen in nearly a century, comparable only to the Smoot-Hawley Act era and subsequent wartime economic shifts."
  (24:46 - 26:10)

• Permanent Economic Restructuring:
  "These tariffs are likely to remain long after Trump's presidency due to their substantial revenue generation and the structural changes they've imposed on global trade relationships."
  (25:42 - 26:10)

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a reflection on the transformative impact of Trump's tariffs on the global economy and corporate strategies. While the immediate turmoil has subsided, the long-term consequences indicate a permanent shift in international trade dynamics and domestic economic policies.

• Permanent Change:
  "It may have already happened without our full realization. The world has changed, potentially in ways that are here to stay."
  (26:26 - 27:01)

• Final Thoughts:
  "CEOs are bracing for inevitable changes, balancing between regulatory pressures and economic necessities, while the broader market remains resilient, partly thanks to the AI boom."
  (Throughout the discussion)

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "President Trump has implemented sweeping global tariffs on more than 90 countries..." — Andrew Ross Sorkin (04:07)
• "Surprisingly, CEOs are calmer than expected..." — Andrew Ross Sorkin (06:19)
• "Companies have been making pilgrimages to Washington..." — Andrew Ross Sorkin (08:25)
• "Raising prices could provoke public criticism from the President..." — Andrew Ross Sorkin (10:44)
• "Massive investments in AI and data centers by companies like Microsoft..." — Andrew Ross Sorkin (22:11)

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Final Thoughts: This episode of The Daily offers a comprehensive analysis of the complex interplay between political decisions and corporate strategies. Andrew Ross Sorkin's insights reveal a landscape where CEOs are navigating unprecedented challenges, balancing economic imperatives with political pressures, and adapting to a new era of global trade marked by enduring tariffs.

For listeners interested in the ramifications of trade policies and their impact on the business world, this episode provides valuable perspectives and expert commentary.

Transcript

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[Michael Barbaro]

Hey, it's Michael Barbaro from the Daily I'm here with a new way that you can listen to podcasts. And maybe you're thinking, I don't need that after all, you are clearly hearing me right now. But I'm telling you, you kind of do need this. You want this in your life. It is so convenient. So right now, on the New York Times app, down at the bottom, you'll see a set of headphones and the word listen. Once you tap on it, you can find our show and so many other great shows. Ezra Klein Headlines, Hard Fork, the interview. On top of all those podcasts, you can get narrated articles, audio versions of news stories so you can turn on that big, incredible New York Times Magazine story while you run or cook or drive home. It is truly. And it makes it so easy to find something to listen to anywhere and everywhere. If you don't have the New York Times app, no problem. But as they say, run. Do not walk to the app Store on your phone, get the New York Times app and then tap listen at the bottom of the screen. Okay, now back to today's episode from.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

The New York Times. I'm Natalie Kitroweff. This is the D.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Last week, President Trump hit several countries with yet another round of punishing tariffs. So far, the economy's been resilient in the face of his trade war, but it's unclear how long that'll last. Today I talked to my colleague, DealBook editor Andrew Ross Sorkin, about what CEOs are telling him privately about Trump's tariffs and where they think all of this is headed. It's Monday, August 11th.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Andrew, welcome to the show.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thanks for having me.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

We are coming to you because you are one of the most deeply sourced and best connected business reporters out there. You literally talked to the president on CNBC last week.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I did.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

It was kind of wild, kind of amazing. And you're regularly talking to business executives who've been navigating these ups and downs of tariffs for months. I feel like by this point we've asked this question on the show over and over again, but help me make sense of this moment. What is the status of Trump's tariffs as of right now?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So the big shift is that after many, many months of speculation about tariffs, about what the ultimate rates would look like, about how severe they would be, and how businesses would have to navigate them, that the tariffs are actually here. So we had what the President called Liberation Day back in April.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

He announced these remarkably high tariffs. I mean, we're talking about numbers in excess of 100%, in some cases 145%. And business leaders, politicians around the world had a collective freakout.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Yep.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But over the last several months, those tariff rates continually got delayed and postponed.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right. We got that taco meme on Wall.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Street, the taco meme.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Trump always chickens out.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Trump always chickens out. And so here we are in the month of August, and we now have, in large part, a framework for what the tariff rates are going to be.

President Trump. Sweeping global tariffs for more than 90 countries have come into effect, including Japan.

The UK and the European Union. And the President, to some degree at least, isn't totally chickening out.

This is probably the biggest deal ever reached in any capacity, trade or beyond trade.

And now if you are a US company that is importing goods into the United States, you are writing a check to Uncle Sam.

We have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our country. Now. We should have done this many years ago.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So what are some of the rates that we're now looking at actually amount to?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So if goods are coming in from the EU, you're paying 15%. If goods are coming in from Japan, you're paying 15%. If Goods are coming in from China, right this moment, you're paying actually only 30% with the prospect that you could be paying 125%, because that piece of the puzzle is. Has not been fit into the puzzle yet.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Still unsettled.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Still unsettled, by the way, India unsettled. 50%.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right. What was that, Andrew? That shocking rate on India that was just announced of 50% really took me by surprise. I think it took a lot of people by surprise.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, it's a huge about face for the US Government and our country's relationship with India. For the last several years, we have been trying to actually push a lot of companies to actually get out of places like China and move their manufacturing to places like India. But India has been one of the biggest importer of oil from Russia, and so they have been effectively propping up the Russian economy. And Trump is now saying that he's going to use the tariff chess piece, if you will, to. To change that dynamic.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, so we have these huge tariffs on India. We have different rates all over the world. A sense that these things are really, in effect. How are all of the CEOs, all the executives, the investors, the policymakers that you talk to, reacting?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Honestly, the surprising thing is, at this point, they're actually a lot calmer about it all than you might imagine. They may not like it, but I think they're recognizing and deciding that this is their new normal. And the other thing that's so surprising is just how sanguine the markets and the investor class has been around this, because, you know, back in April, there really was a freakout, not just among the CEOs, but the stock market fell precipitously until the president delayed and postponed these tariffs.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Yep, I remember that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You know, now in recent days, you've had the market either flat or actually go up, which suggests that the market is settling in. And to some degree, they're saying this is okay.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, just explain that to me.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's a state of permanence now about these tariffs one way or the other, for at least the next several years, if not the next decades. And I say decades, plural. I think there's a recognition that we are going to be living with some form of tariff. And by the way, maybe those tariffs will change and go up and down, but there's now a sense that it's here. There's a window into what that actually looks like, somewhere between 10% on the lowest end and maybe 30% on the highest end. And so they're starting to realize we're just gonna have to plan to live with this right now. I don't want to overstate the sense that everybody's cool with this. Right? Inside the boardrooms and the corner offices of corporate America, they're worried. They're just saying, okay, we're gonna have to figure out how to deal with our worry. And that's different than the last couple of months of, okay, we're worried, we're freaked out. And we think that somehow, if we can just get to the president, we're gonna somehow get him to back off all of this. And now that they've realized that that's not the case, they're like, okay, we have to actually just figure out what to do about it.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Can we get into that? Actually, up until now, how have CEOs navigated these tariffs? I mean, I can imagine it's been a really Rough road.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think there's two things that have been going on. One is they've been making pilgrimages to Washington to see lawmakers, to try to see the president, to try to see all of his deputies and lieutenants around him and desperately try to persuade them away from this, clearly unsuccessfully.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Clearly.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The other thing they've been doing is spending an extraordinary amount of time trying to rethink their supply chain. Can they move goods from one place to the other? In certain cases, they were trying to get as much of their supplies into the United States early to try to get ahead of the tariffs. So you had Ford, for example, literally sending trucks back and forth between the border of Mexico and the US Bringing as many supplies to the US as they could because they knew they're going to slap us with these tariffs.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay. So they're desperately trying to get the Trump team to back off. That doesn't work. They've been trying to stockpile to avoid the hit of tariffs.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

In the meantime, they haven't been raising prices. That's been a big mystery. What's going on there? Why haven't they passed on the cost of these tariffs to consumers?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So, first of all, just mea culpa myself, which is, I think I, like a lot of people, thought in April that we were gonna see higher prices and higher prices super quickly.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

I love that you're admitting this.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, look, when you saw the president out with, in some cases, tariffs that were supposed to be implemented overnight at 145%, you would invariably say, if, in fact that's true, prices should go up. So the first piece that I was just wrong about was actually that these things would get delayed and postponed. The other thing, though, when you talk to CEOs of some of the big retail companies and just any major manufacturer here in the US Is they say that they've been trying to eat as much of the tariff cost so far as they can.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

And why is that?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's interesting because if you go back to the pandemic, companies did something called taking up price very quickly. They were very worried about inflation, and they would almost raise prices even before they got hit with the costs themselves.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so I thought, and I think a lot of people thought, okay, even before the tariffs are here, companies are just going to raise the prices because they want to get ahead of them.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

They're going to repeat their pandemic playbook.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Exactly. Two things have come into play that are different. One is that the economy is not as strong as it was during the pandemic. And so there was a real concern that actually the market could, can't really accept a much higher price at the kind of volume that some of these companies are selling their products at. That if you were the first mover to raise prices, you would actually lose market share.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Basically, if you're the first one to raise your prices, if you're a Walmart, your customers might turn to a target.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Exactly. And the other thing, and this is more anecdotal, is, is a sense among business leaders that given the President's propensity to critique them directly, if not more than that, that just the optics of raising prices could cause the President to come out publicly and single them out. You saw this happen earlier this year already when there was a news report that Amazon was considering putting literally on the website, the cost of the tariffs.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The day that happened, the President was out there. An hour or two later after that report, which was erroneous, by the way, but he was out there criticizing Amazon and Jeff Bezos was on the phone with the President.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, and this may seem obvious, but just slow down here for me a little bit. Explain what the CEOs are so afraid of. I mean, what is it that they actually think will happen once the President gets so angry with them?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Look, I think this president has taken to targeting certain industries, certain companies that he doesn't like, for whatever reason. We saw his approach to universities in America. We saw him go after some of the big law firms in America. We saw him go after Paramount and CBS News, for example, and not allow a merger to take place until a settlement was reached. So I think that there's enough examples that the business community looks at and goes, it's not just that he's going to write something on Truth Social. If he wants to send his regulatory apparatus after us in one way or another, he can and he will. And that's, I think, to some degree just a deterrent for the entire business world when it comes to doing anything that they think would cause his wrath.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So based on those private conversations that you're having, if you can share some of the learnings that you've had, how does that fear operate within a company? How does it change your decision making?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I give you a very tangible example. I talked to an executive at a company that was thinking of hiring somebody that had worked in the Biden administration. Not a particularly famous person in the Biden administration, but somebody who had worked in that Biden administration. As part of thinking about whether to hire that person or not, they decided to make Phone calls to back channel with people in and around the president to try to understand whether this person would be acceptable to the president.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Wow. Running individual hiring decisions by them.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think that is the fear that he has imposed on parts of the business community. And so you can look at that example. That's a small example. Think about a company that's going to very publicly raise their prices. Well, if they can try to avoid raising their prices for as long as they can, they will. You know, it's interesting because I spent a lot of time talking to these leaders of companies, many of whom happen to be billionaires, and you'd think, okay, they have this extraordinary amount of money, they shouldn't be worried about the president or anybody else. I mean, I think that's sort of the conventional wisdom.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Yeah, that's exactly why I asked the question.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But the truth is that I think almost singularly, this is the one person in the world who has more power than they do. But you know, in fairness, CEOs have always been trying to stay in the good graces of, frankly, every president. And I was just with a tech CEO who actually made this point. He's a Trump supporter who said, look, during the Biden administration, you know, we were implementing all sorts of DEI and ESG related programs in our companies to hopefully buy some goodwill with the President. We were investing in EVs. Sometimes the Biden administration during COVID was requesting certain social media companies to take down certain posts, to amplify other things, and that some of the big tech companies were doing that in part to stay in the good graces of the administration that was ultimately regulating them in all sorts of other ways. Now, I'm not saying that those are all equivalent things, sure. But I think it's just worth putting on the table.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

I get that what companies have been doing to adapt to tariffs is a way of kind of avoiding a conflict with the President. But in this case, these companies, I mean, they have shareholders, they have to put out earnings reports, you know, and eating the cost of these tariffs just doesn't seem like a sustainable long term solution.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It isn't. And I think the more that I talk to some of these executives, especially in the last couple of weeks, there's a greater sense that things are about to change.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

We'll be right back.

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[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, Andrew, you said this strategy is going to have to change. What are you hearing about what CEOs are going to do?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You know, I just got back from Aspen, Colorado. The Aspen Institute has something called the Aspen Economic Strategy Group meeting every year with many of the former treasury secretaries in the United States. Hank Paulson, Larry Summers and Janet Yellen, and so many CEOs. Larry Fink who runs BlackRock, and Brian Moynihan who runs bank of America. And one of the things just coming out of that meeting that you realize is that this is unsustainable, that at some point the dam does have to break when it comes to prices. And so I think you're going to start to see prices rise. And, and there have been very public indicators of that already. Amazon's said that they're going to have to raise prices and they're going to have to raise prices for two reasons. One is that their own suppliers are charging them more and also all of the sellers in their marketplace are going to be raising their prices because they too can't afford it.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

This is an interesting example because Amazon was this company that was shamed by Trump, you know, didn't do this, backed away, and now they're saying, look, we're going to have to raise these prices.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The rubber meets the road. And while we're talking about the rubber meeting the road, another good example of this is Ford. And I've spent time talking to Jim Farley, who's the CEO of Ford. This is a company that he now says is going to lose $2 billion this year.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Whoa.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so what I keep hearing over and over again from CEOs is that come this fall, they are going to be forced to raise their prices despite how much they like to keep them where they are if they could.

And what are they telling you about their hiring plans? Cuz we just got this pretty weak jobs report. Are your conversations with these executives reflecting any softening in the labor market?

Well, you know, one of the things That a number of CEOs have told me just in the past couple of weeks, is this idea that when they've had job openings, that in many cases they're not filling them. And one of the reasons they're not filling them, and maybe that's reflective of what those job numbers suggest, is this uncertainty. The uncertainty of the tariffs have created an environment where they don't know what the future portends. They don't know once these tariffs are in effect and what prices they're going to ultimately have to sell their products at, what the business looks like in the same way that it did over the last six months. But a lot of the data that we're getting still is inconclusive. If you look at, for example, bank of America and their spending reports, they actually track every customer and how they use credit cards, they would say spending is up. You talk to the CEO of Uber who I spoke to last week, he would tell you there are more people that are ordering cars than before, that they're seeing no slowdown. And so there is this sort of mixed picture, and I don't think we have real clarity just yet.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, so we've talked about various ways that the companies might adapt to tariffs, these new potential strategies. One, raising prices. Another potential effect would be their hiring. What if they just did what the Trump administration wants them to do and moved manufacturing or sourcing to the United States? I mean, that is a way of.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Adapting to the tariffs, and many are looking at that. There is no question that they're trying, in some cases, to do that. But it takes a very long time to be able to move supply chains around, to be able to build a new manufacturing facility. And so during that period of time, you still are going to have to import goods. An example of that is the way Apple is approaching all of this. We just saw them announce that they are going to be investing an additional $100 billion in manufacturing here in America.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Huge announcement.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But Tim Cook was asked in the White House, when would the actual iPhone, the full phone, be produced in the United States? And he said, not for a very long time. And that's because even if he wanted to, just the physical nature of getting everything coordinated would take years.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So, basically, even if the tariffs have the desired outcome, you could still see an economic impact in the meantime. While that is playing out, the laws.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Of economic gravity would suggest that at some point you have to pass the costs on to customers. The question is how big an impact that's going to have on the overall economy.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Given this picture that you've laid out for us.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

With these cracks emerging in the US Economy, why has the stock market been doing so well? We're in all time high territory right now. How do you explain that?

Well, there's this other phenomenon in our economy that we haven't talked about, which is artificial intelligence. And just all of the data centers which are being built around the country, which are helping support our entire economy in ways that didn't exist only a couple years ago. And so you have companies like Microsoft, which will spend $120 billion this year, that's into the economy to be building data centers. And when they're building data centers, it has an impact on buying semiconductors. So all of a sudden they're buying these GPUs from Nvidia. They are building on land, so they're helping support real estate prices. All of these data centers need electricians and construction work and electricity. So the energy complex is getting impacted. So there is this enormous force that is lifting a lot of parts of our economy. So even if prices go up in certain areas, it is possible that perhaps our economy can absorb more of it than we might if we didn't have this thing called AI happening around us.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

You're saying these companies are just injecting a huge amount of cash into the economy right now, and that's part of what's making it look so resilient.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's extraordinary. I mean, some people call it a gold rush, other people call it a sugar rush, and I don't think we know yet which it ultimately will be. It's hard to believe that these kinds of investments at this scale are going to be here forever. Call me in five years from now. It's possible that if it took several hundred people to build the data center, the data center only needs 5, 10, 15 employees. So invariably, this can't go on at that level forever. But there are some people who believe that AI will fundamentally change our economy in all sorts of other ways.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So, big picture, I want to zoom out and just think broadly about the moment that we're in when we say that tariffs are here to stay. When the CEOs, when the investors tell you that, how significant is that? Andrew, in the course of economic history.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We have not seen anything like this in nearly 100 years. The last time that we had this kind of reordering was in the 30s and 40s. And part of that was Smoot Hawley, which was an effort by the United States to tariff other countries. And then we had a war which reshapes a lot of our universe. I think these tariffs are going to reshape the relationship that the United States has with so many countries and for a very long time, because one of the things that many of the policy leaders that I talk to say is these tariffs are going to be here likely long after President Trump is in the White House. And the reason for that is if, in fact, they're bringing in something like 300, $400 billion a year in revenue from a budget perspective, it's going to be very hard for Congress to say, well, we're not going to have that money anymore.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right? Congress is going to want to spend that money.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Congress is going to want to spend that money. You're gonna have companies that have completely reoriented the way they have organized their own supply chains. They're not gonna turn around on a dime and change that after making all of these new investments. And then you're gonna have all of these trading partners which have reorganized the incentives even inside their own countries as a function of this. And so it's gonna be very, very hard to undo.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So people in Trump's orbit, maybe even the president himself at times have cast what we're looking at is an effort to. To really reorder the global economy. I guess my question is, after hearing you, has that already happened?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's a great question. It may have already happened, and we didn't even realize it. You know, this story feels like it keeps changing every day, and it's hard to know what really is gonna come next, what the stock market's gonna do, what the bond market's going to do, what the political class will do over the next several years. But in so many ways, it does feel already that the world has changed and in some way, perhaps permanently.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Andrew, thanks so much for your time.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thanks for having me.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Foreign we'll be right back.

[Helene Cooper]

I'm Helene Cooper. I cover the U. S. Military for the New York Times. So I'm sitting in my car in a parking lot outside the Pentagon. I had a cubicle with a desk inside the building for years, but the Trump administration has taken that away. So now I sometimes come out here to make phone calls and even to file my stories, using my car as sort of a makeshift desk. People in power have always made it difficult for journalists. It hasn't stopped us in the past, it's not going to stop us now. I will keep working to get you the facts. I want people to understand exactly what we're asking these young men and women of the US Military to do. All of my colleagues at the New York Times are dedicated to helping you understand the areas that they cover. None of this work happens without subscribers. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Here'S what else you need to know.

[Unnamed Reporter]

Today, Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now gone. Got that to change.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

On Sunday, Vice President J.D. vance said that the US is working to arrange a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss an end to the war.

[Unnamed Reporter]

The president said this to me today, privately said, look, maybe this works out, maybe it doesn't. But it's worth the effort, it's worth trying, and we're going to keep.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Vance made the comments during an interview on Fox News. He said he didn't think it would be a good idea for the Russian and Ukrainian leaders to meet before President Trump meets with Putin later this week. That meeting is supposed to take place on Friday in Alaska. It would be the first in person summit between Putin and an American president since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And it's seen as a victory for Putin, who's been isolated from Western leaders. For and in a highly unusual arrangement, two American AI chipmakers have agreed to give the US Government a cut of the money they make in China. People familiar with the deal told the Times that the companies, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, are expected to pay the US 15% of the money they take in from selling AI chips to China. The Times is reporting that Nvidia's CEO met with Trump at the White House to discuss the deal last Wednesday and agreed to the arrangement. The Commerce Department began granting licenses for AI chip sales two days later. That essentially made the federal government a partner in the company's business in China. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Novetsky, Alex Stern and Caitlin O'. Keefe. It was edited by M.J. davis, Lynn and Mark George with help from Lisa Chow. Contains original music by Elisheba Itup, Dan Powell and Marion Lozano and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonder. That's it for the Daily. I'm Natalie Kitroweff. See you tomorrow.

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