Keith Weiner, founder and CEO of Monetary Metals, discusses gold and silver’s performance so far this year and shares his outlook for the rest of 2025.
He also explains what makes today’s gold bull market different than those seen in prior years.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Nvidia and AMD have agreed to share 15% of their revenue from sales to China with the U.S. government, the White House confirmed Monday, sparking debate about whether the move could affect the chip giants’ business and whether Washington might seek similar deals.
In exchange for the revenue cut, the two semiconductor companies will receive export licenses to sell Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s MI308 chips in China, according to the Financial Times.
“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” Nvidia said in a statement to NBC News. “America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”
AMD said in a statement that its initial license applications to export MI308 chips to China have been approved.
The arrangement crafted by President Donald Trump’s administration is “unusual,” analysts told CNBC, but underscores his transactional nature. Meanwhile, investors see the move as broadly positive for both Nvidia and AMD, which once more secure access to the Chinese market.
Nvidia’s H20 is a chip that has been specifically created to meet export requirements to China. It was previously banned under export curbs, but the company last month said it expected to receive licenses to send the product to China.
Also in July, AMD said it would resume exports of its MI308 chips.
At the time, there was no suggestion that the resumption of sales to China would come with conditions or any kind of revenue forfeiture, and the step was celebrated by markets because of the billions of dollars worth of potential sales to China that were back on the table.
On Monday, Nvidia shares rose modestly, while AMD’s stock was up more than 2%, highlighting how investors believe the latest development is not a major negative for the companies.
“From an investor perspective, it’s still a net positive, 85% of the revenue is better than zero,” Ben Barringer, global technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC.
“The question will be whether Nvidia and AMD adjust their prices by 15% to account for the levy, but ultimately it’s better that they can sell into the market rather than hand the market over entirely to Huawei.”
Huawei is Nvidia and AMD’s closest Chinese rival.
Uncertainty, nevertheless, still looms for both U.S. companies over the longer term.
“In the short term, the deal gives both companies some certainties for their exports to China,’ George Chen, partner and co-chair of the digital practice at The Asia Group, told CNBC. ‘For the long term, we don’t know if the U.S. government may want to take a bigger cut from their China business especially if their sales to China keep growing.’
Multiple analysts told CNBC that the deal is “unusual,” but almost par for the course for Trump.
“It’s a good development, albeit a strange one, and feels like the sort of arrangement you might expect from President Trump, who is a deal-maker at heart. He’s willing to yield, but only if he gets something in return, and this certainly sets an unusual precedent,” Barringer said.
Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, said the revenue cut is equivalent to an “indirect tariff at source.”
Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, also posted Sunday on X that the move is a “sort of ‘tax’ for doing business in China.”
But such deals are unlikely to be cut for other companies.
“I don’t anticipate it extending to other sectors that are just as important to the U.S. economy like software and services,” Nick Patience, practice lead for AI at The Futurum Group, told CNBC.
The U.S. sees semiconductors as a strategic technology, given they underpin so many other tools like artificial intelligence, consumer electronics and even military applications. Washington has therefore put chips under an export control regime unlike that of any other product.
“Semiconductor is a very unique business and the pay-to-play tactic may work for Nvidia and AMD because it’s very much about getting export approval from the U.S. gov,” the Asia Group’s Chen said.
“Other business like Apple and Meta can be more complicated when it comes to their business models and services for China.”
Semiconductors have become a highly sensitive geopolitical topic. Over the last two weeks, China has raised concerns about the security of Nvidia’s chips.
Late last month, Chinese regulators asked Nvidia to “clarify” reports about potential security vulnerabilities and “backdoors.” Nvidia rejected the possibility that its chips have any “backdoors” that would allow anyone to access or control them. On Sunday, Nvidia again denied that its H20 semiconductors have backdoors after accusations from a social media account affiliated with Chinese state media.
China’s state-run newspaper Global Times slammed Washington’s tactics, citing an expert.
“This approach means that the US government has repudiated its original security justification to pressure US chip makers to secure export licenses to China through economic leverage,” the Global Times article said.
The Chinese government is yet to comment on the reported revenue agreement.
Trump’s deal with Nvidia and AMD will likely stir mixed feelings in China. On the one hand, China will be unhappy with the arrangement. On the other hand, Chinese firms will likely want to get their hands on these chips to continue to advance their own AI capabilities.
“For China, it is a conundrum as they need those chips to advance their AI ambitions but also the fee to the US government could make it costlier and there is a doubt of US ‘backdoors’ considering US has agreed for chipmakers to supply,” Counterpoint Research’s Shah said.
— CNBC’s Erin Doherty contributed to this report.
Former first daughter Ashley Biden this week filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years, according to reports.
The 44-year-old also posted an Instagram story on the same day with the song ‘Freedom’ by Beyonce.
In her post, Biden walks through a park giving a thumbs up while the song plays, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, which reported the filing first.
She also posted the quote: ‘New life, new beginnings means new boundaries. New ways of being that won’t look or sound like they did before’ over ‘Freedom Time’ by Lauryn Hill.
Biden has been married to plastic surgeon Howard Krein since 2012.
The estranged couple were wed in Greenville, Delaware, in a ceremony that combined her Catholic faith and his Jewish roots, according to People magazine.
A reception was held at the Biden family’s Wilmington lake house.
‘I kept telling Ash, we’ve got to open up the church and practice walking up and down the aisle so I can handle it,’ former President Joe Biden, who was vice president at the time, told People, saying he expected to be emotional at the ceremony.
‘This is the right guy. And he’s getting a helluva woman,’ the former president said at the time. Biden met her husband through her late brother Beau Biden and started dating him in 2010.
She mentioned her wedding when she introduced the former president at the Democratic National Convention last year.
‘At the time, my dad was vice president, but he was also that dad who literally set up the entire reception,’ she said. ‘He was riding around in his John Deere 4-wheeler, fixing the place settings, arranging the plants, and by the way, he was very emotional.’
She added, ‘Before he walked me down the aisle, he turned to me and said he would always be my best friend. All these years later, Dad, you are still my best friend.’
Fox News Digital has reached out to a rep for the former president for comment.
European markets opened on a positive footing Tuesday, riding a wave of global optimism after the United States stepped back from the brink of a trade war escalation with China.
The continent-wide rally provided a moment of calm, but investors remain on high alert as they pivot their focus to a crucial inflation test from the US that could dictate the next major market move.
With trading now underway, London’s FTSE 100 has climbed 0.3%, with the mid-cap FTSE 250 rising 0.4%, both mirroring gains across the continent.
Futures data from IG had already set the stage for a positive session, forecasting gains for France’s CAC 40 (+0.3%), Germany’s DAX (+0.25%), and Italy’s FTSE MIB (+0.27%).
This follows a mixed Monday session and an overnight rally in Asia-Pacific markets, all digesting President Donald Trump’s decision to delay higher tariffs on Chinese goods for another 90 days. In currency markets, the pound strengthened slightly against the dollar to trade above $1.34.
The positive sentiment in London was bolstered by the release of better-than-expected UK jobs data just as the market opened. However, a shadow looms over the UK’s domestic economy.
A new report from the Association of International Retail revealed that American visitors spent less in the country last year than they did in 2019.
The group attributes the decline directly to the government’s 2021 decision to end tax-free shopping for international visitors, arguing that tourists now simply wait to make major purchases until they reach mainland Europe.
The association continues to advocate for the return of VAT-free shopping, claiming it could provide a significant boost to the British economy at a critical time.
While the trade truce provides a temporary tailwind, the market’s next direction hinges on data from across the Atlantic.
Investors are holding their breath for the latest US consumer price index (CPI) report, hoping it will offer insight into the Federal Reserve’s thinking on interest rates ahead of its key September meeting.
With the S&P 500 hovering near an all-time high, the stakes are incredibly high.
Economists polled by Dow Jones expect the headline CPI to show a 0.2% advance for July, and 2.8% on an annualized basis.
More importantly, the so-called core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, is forecast to climb 0.3% month-over-month and 3.1% year-over-year.
Any deviation from these figures could send shockwaves through global markets, potentially derailing the fragile sense of optimism that has defined the week’s opening.
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Lithium, a naturally occurring trace element in the brain, may be able to unlock a key medical mystery: why some people develop Alzheimer’s disease and others don’t, despite similar brain changes.
In a recently published study, scientists at Harvard Medical School state that lithium not only exists in the human brain at biologically meaningful levels, but also appears to protect against neurodegeneration.
Additionally, their work shows that lithium supports the function of all major brain cell types.
The decade-long study drew on mouse experiments and analyses of human brain and blood samples across the spectrum of cognitive health. The Harvard team discovered that as amyloid beta, the sticky protein associated with Alzheimer’s, begins to accumulate, it binds to lithium and depletes its availability in the brain. This drop in lithium impairs neurons, glial cells and other brain structures, accelerating memory loss and disease progression.
“The idea that lithium deficiency could be a cause of Alzheimer’s disease is new and suggests a different therapeutic approach,” said Bruce Yankner, who is the senior author of the study.
Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School who in the 1990s was the first to show that amyloid beta is toxic to nerve cells, said the new findings open the door to treatments that address the disease in its entirety, rather than targeting single features like amyloid plaques or tau tangles.
To explore this possibility, researchers screened for lithium compounds that could evade capture by amyloid beta.
They identified lithium orotate as the most promising candidate. In mice, the compound reversed Alzheimer’s-like brain changes, prevented cell damage and restored memory, even in animals with advanced disease.
Crucially, the effective dose was about one-thousandth of that used in psychiatric treatments, avoiding the toxicity risk that has hampered lithium’s clinical use in older patients.
“You have to be careful about extrapolating from mouse models, and you never know until you try it in a controlled human clinical trial,” Yankner cautioned. “But so far the results are very encouraging.”
The path to these findings began with access to an unusually rich source of brain tissue.
Working with the Rush Memory and Aging Project in Chicago, the team examined postmortem samples from thousands of donors, from cognitively healthy individuals to those with mild cognitive impairment and full-blown Alzheimer’s.
Using advanced mass spectrometry, they measured trace levels of about 30 metals. Lithium stood out as the only one whose levels dropped sharply at the earliest stages of memory loss.
The pattern matched earlier population studies linking higher environmental lithium levels, including in drinking water, to lower dementia rates. But unlike those correlations, the Harvard team directly measured brain lithium and established a normal range for healthy individuals who had never taken lithium as medication.
“Lithium turns out to be like other nutrients we get from the environment, such as iron and vitamin C,” Yankner said. “It’s the first time anyone’s shown that lithium exists at a natural level that’s biologically meaningful without giving it as a drug.”
To test whether this deficiency was more than an association, the researchers fed healthy mice a lithium-restricted diet, lowering brain lithium to levels seen in Alzheimer’s patients.
The animals developed brain inflammation, lost connections between neurons and showed cognitive decline; however, replenishing them with lithium orotate reversed these changes. What’s more, mice given the compound from early adulthood were protected from developing Alzheimer’s-like symptoms altogether.
The findings raise several possibilities. Measuring lithium levels in blood could become a tool for early screening, identifying people at risk before symptoms emerge. Furthermore, amyloid-evading lithium compounds could be tested as preventive or therapeutic agents, potentially altering the disease course more fundamentally than existing drugs.
For now, researchers stress that no one should self-medicate with lithium supplements.
The team emphasized that the safety and efficacy of lithium orotate in humans remain unproven, and clinical trials will be needed to determine whether the dramatic benefits seen in mice translate to people.
Securities Disclosure: I, Giann Liguid, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
NEW YORK — A top official at the Federal Reserve said Saturday that this month’s stunning, weaker-than-expected report on the U.S. job market is strengthening her belief that interest rates should be lower.
Michelle Bowman was one of two Fed officials who voted a week and a half ago in favor of cutting interest rates. Such a move could help boost the economy by making it cheaper for people to borrow money to buy a house or a car, but it could also threaten to push inflation higher.
Bowman and a fellow dissenter lost out after nine other Fed officials voted to keep interest rates steady, as the Fed has been doing all year. The Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, has been adamant that he wants to wait for more data about how President Donald Trump’s tariffs are affecting inflation before the Fed makes its next move.
At a speech during a bankers’ conference in Colorado on Saturday, Bowman said that “the latest labor market data reinforce my view” that the Fed should cut interest rates three times this year. The Fed has only three meetings left on the schedule in 2025.
The jobs report that arrived last week, only a couple of days after the Fed voted on interest rates, showed that employers hired far fewer workers last month than economists expected. It also said that hiring in prior months was much lower than initially thought.
On inflation, meanwhile, Bowman said she is getting more confident that Trump’s tariffs “will not present a persistent shock to inflation” and sees it moving closer to the Fed’s 2% target. Inflation has come down substantially since hitting a peak above 9% after the pandemic, but it has been stubbornly remaining above 2%.
The Fed’s job is to keep the job market strong, while keeping a lid on inflation. Its challenge is that it has one main tool to affect both those areas, and helping one by moving interest rates up or down often means hurting the other.
A fear is that Trump’s tariffs could box in the Federal Reserve by sticking the economy in a worst-case scenario called “stagflation,” where the economy stagnates but inflation is high. The Fed has no good tool to fix that, and it would likely have to prioritize either the job market or inflation before helping the other.
On Wall Street, expectations are that the Fed will have to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September after the U.S. jobs report came in so much below economists’ expectations.
Trump has been calling angrily for lower interest rates, often personally insulting Powell while doing so. He has the opportunity to add another person to the Fed’s board of governors after an appointee of former President Joe Biden stepped down recently.
President Donald Trump took aim at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a press event on Monday over his frustration with the Ukrainian leader’s objection to ‘land swapping.’
‘I get along with Zelenskyy, but, you know, I disagree with what he’s done, very, very severely, disagree. This is a war that should have never happened,’ Trump said, reiterating his belief that the Ukrainian president is in part at fault for Russia’s illegal 2022 invasion.
‘I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, ‘Well, I have to get constitutional approval’,’ Trump said. ‘I mean, he’s got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap, because there’ll be some land swapping going on.’
‘I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody,’ Trump added, noting it was ‘for the good of Ukraine.’
Zelenskyy – who did not declare war on Russia, as Moscow had already invaded, did declare Martial Law on Feb. 24, 2022 with the approval of Ukraine’s parliament, which gave him presidential powers to mobilize a military response — made clear over the weekend that he objected to Trump’s ‘land swapping’ proposal and has repeatedly said it would require a national referendum under the nation’s constitution, not a unilateral decision by him.
Trump wouldn’t detail what exactly he hopes to get out of the meeting with Putin and described it as a ‘feel-out meeting,’ saying within ‘the first two minutes [he’ll] know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.’
‘I’m going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, you got to end this war, you got to end it,’ Trump said, reiterating his belief that if he had won the 2020 election, Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine, saying ‘he wasn’t going to mess with me.’
‘I go into that thing fully loaded right up there, and we’re going to see what happens,’ he continued. ‘It could be a good meeting, and we’ll go a step further. We’ll get it done.
‘I’d like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly, very quick,’ he continued. ‘And, we’re going to be dealing with the European leaders and, we’re going to be dealing with President Zelensky and hopefully we’re going to have a great success.’
Rolls-Royce share price has been in a relentless bull run in the past few years, helped by the robust demand for its services and products in the civil aviation, defense, and power sectors.
RR stock has also surged as management’s efforts to boost sales and reduce spending have been successful. All this has helped it to start returning money to investors through dividends and share buybacks.
Rolls-Royce shares were trading at 1,067p on Monday, a few points below this month’s high of 1,103. It has jumped by 2,705% from its lowest level in 2020, bringing its market capitalization to over $121 billion.
The ongoing Rolls-Royce share price happened as the civil aviation segment boomed after the pandemic halt. Wide-body engine demand has soared, with the supply chain issues being the only hindrance.
At the same time, the return to flying has boosted its services revenue, which is its most important segment. While RR is known for manufacturing engines, it makes most of its money from the long-term service contracts to its customers.
Rolls-Royce stock has boomed as the defence industry has boomed amid the ongoing geopolitical tensions. There is also an ongoing drive by European countries to prop up their defense industrial base as the US becomes unreliable.
RR is also benefiting from the ongoing tailwinds of artificial intelligence that have led to an unprecedented demand for power from data centers. This is notable since Rolls-Royce is a major manufacturer of power equipment and nuclear power engines.
Read more: Takeaway of Rolls-Royce earnings and impact on its share price
The ongoing Rolls-Royce share price has boosted its valuation substantially such that it is now one of the biggest British companies.
The most recent results showed that its half-year revenue jumped to £9 billion from £8.1 billion in the same period a year earlier. Its underlying profit rose to £1.7 billion, while it margin rose to 19.1%.
Rolls-Royce’s profit before tax and free cash flow were £1.68 billion and £1.52 billion. The management also boosted its forward guidance such that it now expects that the operating profit and FCF will be £3.2 billion and £3.1 billion, respectively.
Therefore, dividing the two numbers with the market cap of £89 billion gives it an approximate price-to-operating profit and PCF multiples of about 27. However, the forward price-to-earnings ratio of 47 is quite expensive for the company.
A discounted free cash flow (FCF) metric by Grok identifies the ideal fair value at 618p per share. A similar calculation by Simply Wall Street identifies its fair value at 1080p, which is about 0.80% above the current level.
The weekly chart shows that the Rolls-Royce stock price has been in a relentless bull run in the past few years and is now trading at its all-time high.
There is a risk that this bull run could be about to end for two main reasons. First, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Stochastic Oscillator have moved to the overbought level. A highly overbought asset is always at risk of a bearish reversal.
Second, the stock rises much higher than the moving averages. It is much higher than the 50-week moving average at 743p and the 100-week average at 584p. Therefore, there is a risk that it will go through mean reversion, where an asset drops so that it can approach the historical averages. If this happens, it may drop to about 800p by the end of the year.
The post Is the expensive Rolls-Royce share price at risk of mean reversion? appeared first on Invezz
Here’s a quick recap of the crypto landscape for Friday (August 8) as of 9:00 p.m. UTC.
Get the latest insights on Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins, along with a round-up of key cryptocurrency market news.
Bitcoin (BTC) was priced at US$116,454, down by 0.8 percent over the last 24 hours. Its lowest valuation on Friday was US$115,979, while its highest valuation was US$117,038.
Bitcoin price performance, August 8, 2025.
Chart via TradingView.
An executive order from the Trump administration about the addition of cryptocurrency investment options to federally regulated 401(k) retirement plans could trigger an influx of new capital and drive up Bitcoin’s price.
Separately, over US$1 billion in Bitcoin call options are set to activate if Bitcoin hits US$200,000 on December 26, when US$8.8 billion in options are set to expire; however, experts believe the presence of these call options reflects strategic positioning rather than a widespread belief in a year-end surge to that level. Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman notes that pro traders are using far-out-of-the-money calls in structured strategies like diagonal spreads and inverse butterflies to manage risk and seek asymmetric upside, not as direct bets on extreme price targets.
Ethereum (ETH) was priced at US$4,053, up by 4.9 percent over the past 24 hours and its highest valuation of the day. Its lowest valuation on Friday was US$3,910 at the start of trading.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order directing the Department of Labor to review its fiduciary rules for retirement plans, potentially clearing the way for assets like cryptocurrencies, private equity and real estate to be included in 401(k)s. While no laws have changed, the move signals a potential shift from the Biden era.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act still requires fiduciaries to choose “prudent” investments, meaning employers will need to justify the inclusion of volatile or opaque assets. Legal experts say the order could influence how federal agencies interpret the rules, but it won’t override decades of court precedents on fiduciary duty.
For now, employers remain cautious due to the risk of lawsuits over imprudent or overly expensive options. Crypto in 401(k)s remains rare, though large firms like BlackRock are already exploring target-date funds with alternative assets.
Ripple and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have dismissed their respective appeals, effectively ending a five-year lawsuit, as per a brief filing on Thursday (August 7) with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
“Following the Commission’s vote today, the SEC and Ripple formally filed directly with the Second Circuit to dismiss their appeals,” Ripple’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, wrote on X.
The SEC sued Ripple in 2020 for selling XRP as an unregistered security. A July 2023 ruling by Judge Analisa Torres found XRP was not a security when sold on public exchanges, but was when sold to institutional investors.
The SEC appealed, and Ripple cross appealed. However, this past April, both parties filed a joint motion to pause their appeals, hinting at a settlement. They settled in May, asking Torres to dissolve the injunction and lower the US$125 million fine. She denied that in June, stating that Ripple must still follow federal securities laws.
Following the announcement, open interest in XRP grew by over 15 percent in 24 hours and futures volumes rose by over 233 percent, according to Coinglass data.
Bitcoin asset manager Parataxis announced its plan to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called SilverBox Corp. IV on Wednesday (August 6).
The deal aims to raise up to US$640 million to “support acceleration of digital asset purchases and support long-term strategy.’ It implies a total pro forma equity value of up to US$800 million for the combined company, assuming the US$10 share price and no redemptions. The new public company will be named Parataxis Holdings and will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “PRTX.”
The company’s goal is to launch a yield-enhanced Bitcoin treasury strategy in the US and South Korea. The deal also includes an equity line of credit to raise additional funds. This will allow it to continue accumulating Bitcoin.
The company has already allocated US$31 million for an initial Bitcoin purchase.
Fundamental Global (NASDAQ:FGF), a new Ethereum treasury vehicle, has filed to raise US$5 billion, signaling the potential emergence of a new mega whale in the Ethereum market.
According to a Friday press release, the company aims to use the majority of the proceeds from a potential US$4 billion common stock offering to acquire a 10 percent stake in the Ethereum network.
“This US$5 billion shelf filing represents a significant step in our capital raising capabilities and positions us to move with speed and scale when capital deployment opportunities arise,” said CEO and Chairman Kyle Cerminara.
“We believe this framework will enable us to capitalize on ETH accumulation opportunities and support our target of a 10 percent stake in the Ethereum Network,’ he added.
Binance is teaming up with Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Spain’s second largest bank, to give customers the option of storing their assets with a regulated custodian rather than directly on the exchange.
The arrangement is designed to reassure investors after Binance’s US$4.3 billion fine from US regulators in 2023 over anti-money laundering failures. With BBVA acting as an independent custodian, customer funds would remain secure even if Binance faced hacking, insolvency or further regulatory action.
The partnership leverages BBVA’s strong reputation for compliance and innovation, aiming to encourage more cautious investors to engage with crypto. The move also follows leadership changes at Binance, including founder Changpeng Zhao’s resignation and brief prison sentence, as the company works to repair its image.
Securities Disclosure: I, Giann Liguid, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday thanked European leaders for backing his push to join this week’s U.S.–Russia summit, as Kyiv fears Washington and Moscow could strike a deal to end the war but in a way that undermines Ukraine’s sovereignty.
‘The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people today for the sake of peace in Ukraine, which is defending the vital security interests of our European nations,’ Zelenskyy said.
The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland and the European Commission said in a joint statement that any diplomatic solution brokered between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin must protect the security interests of Ukraine and Europe.
‘The U.S. has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously,’ EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Reuters on Sunday. ‘Any deal between the U.S. and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security,’ she added.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the upcoming summit ‘will be about testing Putin’ and will serve as a measure of how serious the Russian leader is about ‘bringing this terrible war to an end.’
Both the White House and the Kremlin have acknowledged Zelenskyy’s request to join the talks, though no formal invitation has been issued. Trump and Putin are scheduled to meet in Alaska on Aug. 15. If Zelenskyy were to take part, the meeting would mark the first between Putin and Zelenskyy since the start of Moscow’s war.
The meeting, which Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Friday, comes on the heels of Washington’s threats to impose steep tariffs on the Kremlin and its allies.
Trump has previously singled out countries like India and China—top buyers of discounted Russian crude — for undermining G7 price caps and weakening the impact of Western sanctions.
In response, bipartisan lawmakers introduced the Sanctioning Russia Act, which would impose a 500% tariff targeting the core of Russia’s economy — its oil and gas exports — if Moscow continues to resist peace efforts or escalates the conflict.
Meanwhile, a senior member of Putin’s inner circle warned that multiple countries are mounting ‘titanic efforts’ to undermine the upcoming summit between the Russian leader and Trump.
‘Undoubtedly, a number of countries interested in continuing the conflict will make titanic efforts to disrupt the planned meeting between President Putin and President Trump,’ wrote Russia’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, in a Telegram post on Saturday, referencing the Kremlin’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
While Dmitriev did not name specific countries, he warned that critics of the upcoming talks could seek to sabotage the summit through diplomatic maneuvers or disinformation through the media.