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Foreignshakes and smiles in Washington, more question marks remain over how to achieve peace in Ukraine. Plus, Softbank says it's investing $2 billion in chipmaker intel and the cost of being a parent. We kick off our series looking at the financial challenges of having a family.
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There absolutely is a sense of trade offs in a number of the families that I've spoken to, but at the same time many of these are people who are committed to the idea of having a big family and loving kids.
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It's Tuesday, August 19th. I'm Azhar Sucri for the Wall Street Journal. Here is the AM edition of what's news, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. The path toward peace in Ukraine remains uncertain today, with President Trump now calling for a summit between the leaders of Russia and Ukraine as part of the U. S led push to end the war. At the White House, Ukrainian President VL Vladimir Zelenskyy and a host of European leaders pushed Trump to drive a hard bargain with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Just three days after the two leaders held a friendly meeting in Alaska, the Kremlin said only that a meeting between senior Ukrainian and Russian negotiators had been discussed. The details of how Ukraine's allies would protect the country from any future Russian aggression following a halt in fighting are also up in the air. Speaking on Fox News, the Ingram Angle NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter said one proposal is for the US And European nations to provide Ukraine a guarantee that they would intervene effectively, a version of NATO's Article 5 on collective security. What we are discussing here is not NATO membership. What we are discussing Here is Article 5 Type of Security guarantees for Ukraine and what they exactly will entail will now be more specifically discussed, according to our reporting. Trump and European leaders agreed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead a task force of national security advisers and NATO officials to draft security assurances for Ukraine. The White House declined to comment, while a spokesman for Rubio didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Also in Washington, German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz underlined the importance of a ceasefire before any future summit. A real negotiation can only take place at a summit in which Ukraine itself also participates. Such a summit is only conceivable if the weapons fall silent. I reiterated this demand today. According to European officials, Zelenskyy made a series of proposals to Trump, including the purchase of about $100 billion worth of American weapons and equipment with financing help from European partners, the official said. Trump responded favorably, but emphasized NATO members would have to foot the bill. Japanese tech investment giant Softbank has agreed to invest $2 billion in chip maker intel, amounting to a roughly 2% stake. It comes as the Trump administration is also discussing the possibility of taking its own 10% financial stake to revive the company's fortunes and help Bolst semiconductor manufacturing in the us. Investors in intel expressed confidence in the move, with the chipmaker's shares popping more than 5% in off hours trading. SoftBank shares fell 4% in Tokyo. S and P Global Ratings has affirmed its credit ratings for the us, saying it expects revenue from President Trump's tariffs to offset the expected fiscal hit from his recent tax and spending bill. The credit ratings company maintained the US's AA long credit rating and kept the outlook stable. It comes despite concerns that tariffs could put a brake on business confidence and economic growth while spurring inflation and slowing hiring. Now add this to the list of tariffed products knives, electrical transformers, and hundreds of other finished goods that had evaded Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum but are now subject to the 50% import levy. The change represents a significant escalation of Trump's metal tariffs and would apply to about $138 billion worth of imported goods. That's according to estimates from Michigan State University. Professor Jason Miller, the president of the aluminum association trade group, called the expansion a win for U.S. aluminum makers. And coming up today, the first of the big box retail earnings, with Home Depot reporting results before the opening bell. Later this week, we'll hear from Target, Walmart and Lowes. The Trump administration has restored a public website that tracks federal spending, a victory for lawmakers who complained that the White House was using the blackout to freeze funding without public disclosure. The restoration follows a decision by a U.S. court of Appeals judge who denied the administration's motion to postpone the website's release. The website was taken down in March by the White House Office of Management and Budget, prompting a lawsuit suit by an advocacy group and complaints by lawmakers that the OMB was making it difficult to tell if funds passed by Congress were being spent. OMB didn't immediately comment on the website. Being restored, coming up with more Americans than ever putting off having children or deciding to have none at all, we'll hear about families bucking this trend despite the mounting economic hurdles. That's after the break. Raising a child is a gift, a headache, and everything in between. It also takes a whole lot of money. This week, we're breaking down all the tricky financial decisions parents face in 2025. And while those costs have meant some people are having children. Much later, economics reporter TPing Chen writes that other couples are bucking the trend, forging ahead with parenth even when their finances are still rocky, assuming that they'll figure out a way to make it work. She spoke to our supervising producer and mother of two, Sandra Kilhoff. Take a listen.
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C
We've repeatedly covered how inflation has pushed prices up and how wages haven't entirely kept up with that inflation, essentially pricing many people out of major life purchases like homes, cars. Tell me, how costly is it to be a parent now?
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B
Of course it's going to be a range, but according to 120 analysis based on federal data and inflation data, it can cost around $310,000 to raise a child until age 18. And that is not counting the cost of college.
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C
There's a lot to think about before having kids. What has that meant for families that you've spoken to in writing this article about essentially being able to afford having.
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B
Children to back up because the cost of parenting has gotten so high? And at the same time too, there are also social expectations about parenting that have changed. And I think a more stringent sense of what you need to have in hand financially as well as people's expectations of where they should be before they have kids has has gone up a lot in recent generations and that has made a lot of people feel like they just can't have them full stop or they can't have the size of the families that maybe they would want. For parents who do decide to move ahead and have a family or expand their families, that might look like having one parent stay home. And depending on what your professional prospects are, having a parent stay home and often it ends up being the mother who stays home can be the way that people do try and make it work. But at the same time, of course then you're talking about a one income household, which of course is hard in other ways.
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C
So that sounds like some very difficult decision making with consequences. If you then go down the route of keeping one parent at home to make it work, how do you then navigate being a one income household?
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B
For a number of the films that I have spoken to, it does mean a sense of compromise on what they're going to demand of themselves and their own parenting. So that is not signing up for the idea that being a good parent means shuttling your kids to expensive extracurriculars or travel sports, or even assuming that your kids are going to necessarily go to college college or if they do go to college, being okay with the idea that they will take out a lot of loans to achieve that. There absolutely is a sense of trade offs in a number of the families that I've spoken to. But at the same time, many of these are people who are really committed to the idea of having a big family and loving kids and also wanting to spend time with their kids. And so in some cases, I've absolutely spoken to mothers who feel like staying at home to care for the kids is a sacrifice. But on the other hand, I have also spoken to families who feel like that is also what they want and find that to the most ideal setup tape.
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C
As part of your reporting, you spoke to a family that has forged ahead with having children. Can you tell us a little bit about their thinking around that and what you learned from speaking to them?
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B
Yeah. So this is a family who has five kids and, you know, the husband was a construction worker and the mom had ambitions of becoming basically pursuing a career in interior design and had started along that path and then had that path interrupted by having children, including some with specific medical needs and twins that were months premature. And for them, what it has meant at the end of the day is really, yes, compromising a lot on standard of living and not having the frills that maybe would be nice for them. It has looked like doing their home repairs. They're handy around the house. If anything breaks, they try and fix it. Buying all their clothes secondhand. The only thing that they buy new is shoes. Spending like a dollar shirt, $2 on pants. That's kind of the budget. It means instead of expensive vacations, they are doing trips to the local park and for entertainment like coloring books at the dollar store. Like, these are the kinds of like, treats and simple pleasures that they have been substituting for what other families might spend on more expensive luxuries. And it has meant the mother staying at home with the kids, which definitely has been a trial at times. And she absolutely does mourn the loss of the career that she had embarked upon. That said, they really wanted to have a big family and they are making it happen even with not a lot of resources at hand. And both of them have thought about what's important to them as far as wanting the big family. But also certainly the mom feels like, look, she is taking care of people and there is virtue in that, too.
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C
Tepping Chen is an economics reporter for the Journal Tapeng. Thank you so much for telling us about how this family is making it work.
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B
Thank you for having me.
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A
And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bullivant and Caitlin McCabe. Our supervising producer was Daniel Barkley. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show.
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B
Until then, thanks for listening.