This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, senior editor Joe Sobczyk looks at the president’s latest drive to get a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here.

Seeking a Deal

After weeks of pressuring Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to make concessions for a peace agreement that critics saw as favoring Moscow, President Donald Trump is sending his envoy to make some demands on Vladimir Putin.

The US wants the Russian leader to accept Ukraine’s right to an adequately equipped army and a defense industry, Bloomberg’s Natalia Drozdiak, Alberto Nardelli, Eric Martin and Ellen Milligan report. One of Putin’s conditions to end the war has been a largely demilitarized Ukraine.

Trump’s representative, Steve Witkoff, is heading to Russia to deliver the message. It’s far from clear how hard Trump is willing to push Putin or how much Putin is willing to accept.

That’s hardly the only hurdle to ending the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Zelenskiy has rejected giving up Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Bloomberg previously reported that the US is prepared to recognize Russian control of the region as part of a peace accord.

Giving Crimea back to Ukraine is “going to be a very difficult thing to do,” Trump said today at the White House, where he was meeting with Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. He contended Russia had already made a “pretty big concession” by not taking over the entire country.

Trump with Norway’s Store Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

The war in Ukraine, which Trump had promised to end quickly once he took office, has been simmering partly in the background while the president and much of the US has been focused on tariffs and a trade war with China.

Despite stabs at reaching a ceasefire, the battle still rages. Ukraine was hit by barrage of Russian missiles and drones overnight that drew a rare condemnation of Russia by Trump.

Trump has been warning that his patience is wearing thin. But today, again, was holding out hope for a peace agreement.

“We are thinking that very strongly that they both want peace, but they have to get to the table,” Trump told reporters today.

How long that will take is another thing that’s unclear.

“I have my own deadline,” Trump said, without revealing it, “and we want it to be fast.” — Joe Sobczyk

Don’t Miss

Trump said his administration was talking with China on trade, after Beijing denied the existence of negotiations on a deal and demanded the US revoke all unilateral tariffs.

The US and South Korea could reach an “agreement of understanding” on trade as soon as next week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, following talks between the two nations.

Japan intends to push back against any US effort to bring it into an economic bloc aligned against China because of the importance of Tokyo’s trade ties with Beijing.

The Trump administration is considering whether to reduce certain tariffs targeting the auto industry that carmaker executives have warned would deal a severe blow to profits and jobs. 

CEOs are warning that the price of everything from Kit Kats and diapers to cars will go up as they pass on tariff and commodity costs to shoppers, which threatens to slow consumer demand and juice inflation.

Orders placed with US factories for business equipment barely rose in March, suggesting firms are growing cautious amid uncertainty surrounding tariffs and tax policy.

Sales of previously owned homes in the US fell in March by the most since 2022 as buyers remained constrained by persistently high mortgage rates and prices.

Applications for unemployment benefits last week picked up slightly by 6,000 to 222,000, which was in line with economists’ forecasts and reflects a stable labor market.

The administration’s  mass deportation campaign has created extreme overcrowding at a Miami detention center, where throngs of people have been forced to sleep on floors and kept in short-term holding areas.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s funding freeze for local governments with “sanctuary” policies amid the president’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

International students targeted by Trump’s hardline immigration agenda are turning to US courts to fight the administration’s efforts to cancel their legal status.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let the president’s ban on transgender servicemembers take effect, putting a fresh test of LGBTQ rights and presidential power before the justices.

The Trump Organization fired a conservative lawyer who served as its ethics adviser hours after the president attacked him for helping Harvard University sue the administration.

Watch & Listen

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., hosts Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz interviewed John Hope Bryant, founder and CEO of Operation Hope Inc., about the impact of tariffs on consumers and about increasing financial literacy.

On the program at 5 p.m., they talk with Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves about how his state is weathering tariffs and the DOGE-driven cuts to federal programs.

On the Odd Lots podcast, Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal talk with economist David Woo, the founder of David Woo Unbound, about the political, market and real economy implications of the dramatic escalation of the trade war with China and why Americans soon will begin to feel the pain. Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Chart of the Day

Newly minted college grads are likely to have a tough job hunt. The labor market for recent college graduates deteriorated noticeably in the first quarter of 2025, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. The unemployment rate jumped to 5.8% — the highest reading since 2021 — and rose by a roughly a full percentage point since the end of 2024. Further, the underemployment rate rose sharply to 41.2%. The underemployment rate is defined as the share of graduates working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree. — Alex Tanzi

What’s Next

The University of Michigan’s final gauge of consumer sentiment for this month will be released tomorrow.

Trump attends the funeral for Pope Francis on Saturday.

The House and Senate are on break until Monday.

Job openings and layoffs in March will be reported on Tuesday.

The Conference Board’s gauge of consumer confidence in April is set for release on Tuesday.

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the PCE price index, for March will be reported Wednesday.

Pending home sales in March also will be reported Wednesday.

The April unemployment rate will be reported May 2.

Factory orders for March also are released on May 2.

Seen Elsewhere

• A new study suggests that the cocktail of additives in ultra-processed foods may pose health risks beyond the what could be explained by the individual substances themselves, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• Interior Department officials are looking at revising the boundaries of some national monuments in the West to open up more public land to mining and oil production, the Washington Post reports.
• The board of Acadia Healthcare, one of the biggest providers of mental health services in the US, promised bonuses to top executives to deal with a slew of federal investigations, the New York Times reports.

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