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According to ChainCatcher, White House Press Secretary Levitt stated that the U.S. military will not be deployed inside Ukraine, but can provide assistance in coordination and security assurance. Trump has instructed the national security team to coordinate with Europe. Levitt said that Trump has proposed a solution for NATO to purchase American weapons. Levitt also mentioned that Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky have both expressed a willingness to sit down for negotiations, and Trump hopes for direct diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine. Currently, arrangements for a meeting between Zelensky and Putin are underway.

According to ChainCatcher, Deutsche Bank rate strategists have stated that US Treasury Secretary Bessent’s view—that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate is more than one percentage point higher than what models suggest is appropriate—is incorrect. Bessent previously claimed that “no matter what model” is used, it indicates that rates “should be 150 to 175 basis points lower.” However, no such model has been found to support this claim, and the Deutsche Bank strategist team led by Matthew Raskin has recently joined the effort to verify it. Raskin, a former Federal Reserve economist and advisor, and his team stated in a report on Tuesday that the rules used by the Fed in its semiannual monetary policy report “do not clearly point to a rate cut, let alone a cut of 150 to 175 basis points.” They noted, “It should be pointed out that the current federal funds rate happens to fall within the relatively narrow range prescribed by the rules,” which is roughly between 4% and 4.65%, suggesting that a 25 basis point rate cut “might be reasonable.”