Trump-Putin Expectations, Trump and D.C. Homelessness, Inflation Check-In

Speaker 1 A listening exercise. That's what the White House is now calling President Trump's upcoming summit with Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 2 But without Ukraine's President Vlodyomir Zelensky in attendance, what's the point?

Speaker 1 I'm Michelle Martin. That's A.
Martinez, and this is up first from NPR News.

Speaker 1 Hundreds of National Guard troops, federal agents, and Metropolitan Police are now patrolling Washington, D.C. streets, and homeless people also face a crackdown.

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Speaker 2 Preparations are underway in Alaska for a summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Speaker 1 It will be their first meeting of Trump's second term and comes as Ukraine's leader raises alarms that Russia may be planning a new offensive in the fall.

Speaker 1 White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is downplaying the chances of a breakthrough, describing the summit as a, quote, listening exercise.

Speaker 8 So this is for the president to go and to get a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end.

Speaker 2 NPR senior White House correspondent Tam Rakith is traveling today to Alaska, joins us now before heading to the airport. So Tam, I mean, it's a listening exercise.

Speaker 2 At this point, though, what are the expectations for this meeting?

Speaker 9 There was a time last week before the summit was actually announced when White House statements made it seem like a trilateral meeting, including Trump, Putin, and President Vladimir Zelensky from Ukraine was being considered.

Speaker 9 But when Trump announced the details on Friday, it was just a bilateral meeting with Putin. Trump has made no secret of his desire to be the one to broker the deal to end the fighting in Ukraine.

Speaker 9 But by Monday morning, Trump was saying this is just a, quote, feel-out meeting. So in yesterday's briefing, after Levitt called it a listening exercise, I asked about expectations.

Speaker 9 Last week, the meeting with Putin was sort of described potentially as an opportunity for a deal. Now it's a feeling out.

Speaker 9 Has there been a shift in expectations within the White House or an effort to temper expectations about what success looks like for this meeting?

Speaker 8 I mean, look, I think both can be true, right? The president has always said he wants a peace deal. He wants to see this war come to an end.

Speaker 8 But this bilateral meeting is a bilateral meeting between one party in this two-party war.

Speaker 2 Okay, so if Trump can't make a deal with only one party, then what's the point to him of flying all the way to Alaska for a face-to-face meeting?

Speaker 9 President Trump is meeting virtually with Zelensky and European leaders ahead of the summit and has also said he'll speak to them right after his meeting with Putin.

Speaker 9 Levitt was asked why Zelensky isn't coming to the summit, and she said the meeting came about because Putin asked for a meeting with Trump.

Speaker 9 So she says Trump agreed to the meeting and is, quote, honored to host Putin on American soil.

Speaker 9 Trump has complained recently that Putin tells him he wants peace when they talk on the phone, but then turns around and bombs Ukraine.

Speaker 9 So Levitt said there's value in Trump sitting down face to face with Putin and taking a measure of his seriousness.

Speaker 9 But critics say meeting with Putin without real preconditions rewards Putin for malign behavior as he continues to wage a war he started.

Speaker 9 And they say there's a risk that Putin gets Trump to take a position that disadvantages Ukraine and European allies.

Speaker 2 So I got to admit, Tam, I mean, I am a little interested to see what happens on Friday. Any more details about what to expect?

Speaker 9 I, too, am interested to see how this plays out. A reminder that this is a major summit that is being thrown together in about a week.

Speaker 9 What we know is that they will meet in Anchorage, Alaska, and there will be a one-on-one component with Trump and Putin meeting without their their larger delegations.

Speaker 9 That is something that they did in Trump's first term that generated a lot of controversy because normally there are note-takers, even in more intimate meetings between leaders.

Speaker 9 And Levitt said she expects President Trump will take questions from reporters once the meeting is over.

Speaker 9 As for whether Putin will join him for that press conference, the White House didn't have an answer on that yet.

Speaker 2 All right, that's NPR's Tamar Keith. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 9 You're welcome.

Speaker 2 National Guard troops deployed on the streets of Washington last night alongside hundreds of federal agents and Metropolitan Police.

Speaker 1 President Trump says the goal is to make the city safer. One part of the plan that's coming into focus is how the White House intends to treat people living on the streets and in homeless camps.

Speaker 1 Advocates fear many of them will wind up behind bars.

Speaker 2 NPR's Brian Mann joins us now. So, Brian, what have we learned about how this crackdown will affect people in the nation's capital who lack housing?

Speaker 10 Yeah, we just heard from Tamara, and she was also able to ask this question directly at a White House press briefing. Where will these homeless people go?

Speaker 10 And here's how spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt answered.

Speaker 8 Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services.

Speaker 8 And if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.

Speaker 10 Now, it's that last part, A, the punishment part, sending people to jail, that worries many experts.

Speaker 2 But if people are offered a place in a shelter, I mean, doesn't that mean they can avoid jail?

Speaker 10 Yeah, people I've been speaking with here in Washington who've been trying for years to reduce homelessness say it's not that simple.

Speaker 10 They say there just aren't enough shelters for people living on the streets. Jesse Rabinowitz is with the group called the National Homelessness Law Center.

Speaker 11 There are very few beds available. There are a handful of shelter beds available in far-flung parts of the city, often in places where people don't want to be.

Speaker 10 And experts I've been speaking to also say shelters aren't a permanent fix for many Americans. Apartments and homes are unaffordable.

Speaker 10 Even after staying for a while in shelters, many people wind up back on the streets and potentially now behind bars.

Speaker 2 And President Trump also says he wants to force homeless people with addiction and mental health challenges to get treatment. Here again, though, I mean, if they don't agree, they could go to jail.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, do experts think that kind of pressure is a good idea?

Speaker 10 I put that question to Dr. Stephen Taylor.
He heads the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Speaker 10 And Taylor told me a lot of people who live on the streets with addiction are really ill, and he thinks crackdowns like this can actually do a lot more harm than good.

Speaker 12 And it is a chronic illness. It's not the kind of thing where you sweep people up, you get them better, and then they're cured forever and that's it.

Speaker 10 And here again, experts say there also just aren't enough treatment beds for people with these really complicated health problems.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, homelessness is obviously a national issue.

Speaker 2 Is the president's move to break up homeless camps in Washington something we might see somewhere else?

Speaker 10 Yeah, Levitt said yesterday dozens of homeless camps here in the city have already been broken up since March.

Speaker 10 And Trump made it plain he wants what he's doing in Washington to happen in lots of other cities. I spoke about this with Ann Oliva, who heads the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Speaker 10 She says Trump's harsh talk is already shifting the way Americans treat people who can't afford housing.

Speaker 13 We've already started to see that take hold in communities that criminalize people

Speaker 13 just because they don't have a safe place to sleep.

Speaker 10 Advocates say they think Trump is tapping into real frustration among Americans about the number of people living on the streets and the fact that these camps keep growing.

Speaker 2 But if experts don't think that Trump's get-tough approach will work, what do they think that will reduce homelessness?

Speaker 10 Yeah, they say the answer is a lot more affordable housing, more affordable health care for people with mental illness and addiction.

Speaker 10 But they say this crackdown is actually happening at a time when the Trump administration is cutting things like Medicaid, also trying to scale back programs that help low-income renters stay in their apartments.

Speaker 2 That's NPR's Brian Mann in Washington, D.C. Brian, thank you.

Speaker 10 Thanks, A.

Speaker 2 The Treasury Department says it collected $28 billion in tariff revenue last month.

Speaker 1 There are signs that some of that extra cost to importers is being passed along to consumers. This week's inflation report shows evidence of tariff-related price hikes.

Speaker 2 Let's bring in MPR's Scott Horsley. So Scott, where are the tariffs showing up and what does it mean for inflation overall?

Speaker 6 The government is taxing just about everything the U.S. imports.
Not all those costs are showing up at the retail level yet.

Speaker 6 But consumers are paying more for some items we import a lot of, like furniture and toys.

Speaker 6 The price of imported foods like coffee and bananas was also up in July, even as overall grocery prices ticked down a little bit.

Speaker 6 Now, we're likely to see coffee prices climb even more now after President Trump has ordered a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil, the world's biggest coffee producer.

Speaker 6 Michael Pierce, who's with the forecasting firm Oxford Economics, says over time more and more of the tariff price tag is likely to be paid out of consumers' pockets.

Speaker 4 We know from this company's plans they're planning to start raising prices later in the year. So I think it's more a question of when, not if, that we see more increases from tariffs.

Speaker 4 It's just proceeding at a very varied rate.

Speaker 6 Now, of course, tariffs are not the only factor driving inflation. Last month also saw rising prices for airfares, used cars, and rent.
That was partially offset by falling prices for gasoline.

Speaker 2 I saw after yesterday's inflation report, Scott, the stock market actually rallied. So why are investors so upbeat?

Speaker 6 Yeah, even though inflation is still elevated, investors are betting it is low enough that the Federal Reserve will see its way clear to cut interest rates when policymakers meet next month.

Speaker 6 That would be good for stocks. Pierce agrees that a rate cut in September is likely, but he says it's not a slam dunk.

Speaker 4 It feels like the Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Inflation is uncomfortably high, core inflation back above 3%.

Speaker 4 This isn't where they would like to be.

Speaker 6 Pierce says the only reason the Fed's even talking about cutting interest rates is because central bankers are worried about the sagging job market.

Speaker 6 You know, we got that jobs report a couple of weeks ago showing weak job growth in July and almost no job growth in May and June.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's the report that prompted President Trump to fire the head of the bureau that's responsible for gathering all those numbers. So bring us up to speed on that.

Speaker 6 Right. This week, Trump nominated a new person to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J.
Antoni, who's an economist from the Conservative Heritage Foundation.

Speaker 6 That choice got immediate blowback from economists on both the left and the right. I spoke to Kyle Pomerlow, who is with another conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

Speaker 6 He worries that Antoni is too partisan and too inexperienced, and says if he's confirmed by the Senate, he runs the risk of wrecking confidence in the government's economic data.

Speaker 6 Pomerlo notes that the inflation numbers, for example, are used to adjust tax brackets.

Speaker 6 And while President Trump might want the government to issue a low wall inflation number for short-term political gain, ultimately that could backfire by forcing families into higher and higher tax brackets.

Speaker 14 We want a good measure of inflation.

Speaker 14 We certainly don't want to be undermeasuring or mismeasuring inflation in a way that's going to cause households to face a higher tax burden when they don't need to.

Speaker 6 That's just one example of why it's really important to get these closely watched economic indicators right and not let them be monkeyed with for partisan political purposes.

Speaker 2 NPR's Scott Horsley. Scott, thank you very much.

Speaker 6 You're welcome.

Speaker 2 And that's Up First for Wednesday, August 13th. I mean, Martinez.

Speaker 1 And I'm Michelle Martin. Thanks for waking up with NPR.
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