(LONDON) — Ukraine and the United States have agreed to terms on a deal relating to critical minerals and other resources, according to a senior Ukrainian official.
As recently as Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump was repeating that some access to the country’s rare minerals would be necessary to secure a deal involving the nation’s continued support for Ukraine. Trump referred to them as a “security” against the investments that the U.S. has already made and might make in the future, although his claims of how much aid the U.S. has provided to date have been widely disputed.
Trump said the U.S. has spent $350 billion toward Ukraine, though he has not cited where he’s gotten that figure.
Government resources place the amount of aid appropriated by Congress for Ukraine since the war began in 2022 at $174 billion.
“That is why we must have an agreement with Ukraine on critical minerals and rare earths and various other things as security. And I think that that’s happening. I think we’ve made a lot of progress,” Trump said on Monday during a joint press conference with France’s President Emmanuel Macron. The two leaders met to discuss a path forward to resolving the Russia-Ukraine war, which entered its third year this month.
The senior official also told ABC News that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans to visit Washington, D.C., on Friday.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Donations to Luigi Mangione’s legal defense fund have picked up after a news report that they had slowed down.
Mangione’s online fund has received over $248,000 in donations to help defend him against state and federal charges in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Newsweek reported Tuesday that contributions had slowed to a trickle.
In response, Mangione’s lead defense attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said, “Luigi is aware of the fund and very much appreciates the outpouring of support. My client plans on utilizing it to fight all three of the unprecedented cases against him.”
The item and the lawyer’s comment prompted a series of Reddit posts that appeared to spark renewed interest in Mangione’s case and donations to his fund.
His legal team just added a court-appointed death penalty expert, Avi Markowitz.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges.
He has not yet entered a plea to federal charges, one of which could result in the death penalty if there’s a conviction.
(WASHINGTON) — The decades-long wait for the release of the government’s secret files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy could be nearing an end, with word from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that a plan to make the documents public has been delivered to the White House under an order from President Trump.
“In accordance with the President’s executive order, ODNI submitted its plan to the White House,” a spokesperson for the office said in a Friday afternoon statement to ABC News.
However, it remains unclear how soon thousands of assassination-related documents will actually be declassified. The executive order the president signed last month required only the delivery of a plan by Friday’s deadline “for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
Researchers and authors have expressed the hope that a national security establishment that has historically insisted on secrecy and dragged its heels for years on such requests from others would be spurred to fast action by Trump. But skepticism lingers among experts that any classified materials will be swiftly unredacted by officials at the CIA, FBI and other agencies.
“They face harder choices than Trump knew when he made this breezy proclamation,” author Jefferson Morley, founder of the website jfkfacts.org, told ABC News Friday. “How serious [Trump] was is going to be tested.”
Morley and other experts are particularly interested in having unfettered access to CIA documents regarding surveillance the spy agency conducted on Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Kennedy’s killing. The CIA first opened a file on Oswald following his attempted defection to the Soviet Union in 1959. In the months prior to the assassination, the agency tracked his visit to Mexico City, where he attempted to obtain a visa to travel to Cuba.
“If the Trump order is seriously implemented, we would get those files,” Morley said.
Congress voted in 1992 to have all of the government’s assassination-related documents declassified by 2017, a deadline that has been repeatedly extended by presidents Trump and Biden due to concerns raised by the national security agencies. Ongoing classification was necessary, they argued, to protect the names of agency employees, intelligence assets, sources and methods still in use by U.S. spies, as well as “still-classified covert action programs still in effect,” per a December 2022 CIA memo to the White House.
President Trump’s Jan. 23 order said he has determined that redactions are no longer “consistent with the public interest” and that “the release of these records is long overdue.”
Trump in that same order also requested a plan for the release of classified records related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, with a deadline of early March.
The National Archives, which holds custody of the assassination-related records, said in a statement to ABC News Friday that it “looks forward to implementing the President’s direction in partnership with our agency partners.”
(NEW YORK) — Refrigerators, beers and bicycles stand at risk of higher prices as a result of tariffs on steel and aluminum announced by President Donald Trump this week, experts told ABC News.
The tariffs, which take effect next month, slap a 25% tax on all foreign steel and aluminum, repeating a policy Trump initiated during his first term in office.
Trade experts told ABC News the tariffs will likely raise prices for some goods made out of the two metals, since importers typically pass along a share of the cost of those higher taxes to retailers and, in turn, down the line to consumers.
“This will feed through the economy,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. Higher prices could manifest in as little as three months or as long as a year, Handley added.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the White House said the policy would boost economic performance.
“In his first administration, President Trump instituted an America First economic agenda of tariffs, tax cuts, deregulation and an unleashing of American energy that resulted in historic job, wage and investment growth with no inflation. In his second administration, President Trump will again use tariffs to level the playing field and usher in a new era of growth and prosperity for American industry and workers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.
Here are the prices that may increase as a result of tariffs on steel and aluminum:
Cars and trucks
Steel is the top material by weight in a car, accounting for about 60% of its weight, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.
Once steel imports face stiff taxes, experts forecast the price of steel paid by U.S. manufacturers will rise, meaning higher input costs for carmakers. Those companies, they added, are likely to hike prices for consumers as a means of offsetting some of those costs.
“There’s a lot of metal in a Ford truck,” Handley said. “If it’s more expensive, they’ll have to charge more for the car.”
Ford declined to respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Speaking on Tuesday at the Wolfe Research conference, an investor gathering, Ford CEO Jim Farley said potential tariffs on steel and aluminum are causing “cost and chaos,” according to a transcript of the event shared by Ford.
Bill Hanvey, president and CEO of Auto Care Association, a trade group representing thousands of firms across the vehicle supply chain, criticized the steel tariffs.
“Many specialty steel products used in our industry are not readily available from domestic sources, making access to global supply chains essential,” Hanvey said in a statement.
Soda and beer
Aluminum tariffs risk higher prices for beverages packaged in aluminum cans, such as beer and soft drinks, some experts said.
The previous set of tariffs on aluminum cost the U.S. beverage industry $1.7 billion between 2018 and 2022, according to the Beer Institute, an industry trade group.
“Paying a tariff-laden price on all aluminum drives up the cost of doing business and makes consumer goods more expensive,” the Beer Institute said in 2022.
In response to the tariffs imposed by Trump this week, the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild warned on X: “Our small brewery owners and customers will pay the price.”
Some soda companies may also feel the pinch. Speaking on an earnings call on Tuesday, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said the company may focus on a different packaging material if aluminum prices rise.
Home appliances
Major home appliances — such as refrigerators and washing machines — rely in part on steel, making them vulnerable to potential price increases, Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, told ABC News.
“You would certainly expect to see those goods get a little bit more expensive,” Miller said.
In the aftermath of steel and aluminum tariffs during Trump’s first term, major appliances showed price increases of between 5% and 10% between June 2018 and April 2019, Miller added, citing a monthly government data release. Those price hikes far outpaced an overall inflation rate of around 2%.
Though prices for major appliances started to decline in the latter part of 2019, Miller noted, forecasting at the very least a halt in the price drops.
Bicycles
Steel and aluminum make up a key component of bicycles, raising the likelihood of price increases, Handley said.
“Bicycles will definitely be more expensive,” Handley said, pointing to the aluminum used for bicycle frames and components. In some cases, he added, those raw materials depend on steel.
Last month, trade organization People For Bikes expressed concern about 25% tariffs issued for Canadian and Mexican goods, as well as a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. Within days, Trump paused the tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month, though they remain on the table.
“As a result of the new administration’s policies, the international trade landscape has become, and will remain, increasingly turbulent,” Matt Moore, policy counsel at People For Bikes, wrote in a blog post.
