The deteriorating state of US relations with Ukraine

Welcome back to White House Watch. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent will speak at the Economic Club of New York today. For now, let’s get into:

• The US stopping intelligence sharing with Ukraine

• Trump giving carmakers a tariff reprieve

• Why farmers are so frustrated

The Trump administration has furthered its break with Ukraine by announcing that it will stop sharing intelligence with Kyiv, just days after halting military aid to the war-torn nation.

“[Donald] Trump had a real question about whether [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy was committed to the peace process, and he said let’s pause,” John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, said of the decision.

He added that there was hope that the support could be restored. “I want to give a chance to think about that, and you saw the response that President Zelenskyy put out,” Ratcliffe said. “So I think on the military front and the intelligence front, the pause that allowed that to happen, I think will go away.”

US intelligence has been essential in helping Ukraine to identify and strike Russian military targets.

“If they don’t reverse it soon, it will become really difficult for the Ukrainians because it takes away their battlefield advantage,” said a senior western official.

After Trump’s heated Oval Office clash with Zelenskyy last week, relations between Washington and Kyiv deteriorated before more recent signs of repair.

Zelenskyy made a show of contrition on Tuesday, saying the meeting was “regrettable” and Ukraine was “ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible”. He expressed readiness to sign a deal with Trump “at any time” that would give the US the rights to profit from exploiting Ukraine’s natural resources. (Our commodities correspondent breaks down why rare earths have been in the spotlight.)

Amid halting efforts to stop the fighting in Ukraine, UK defence secretary John Healey flew to Washington yesterday for talks with his US counterpart Pete Hegseth on the “parameters” of a European peace plan for Ukraine.

Healey will aim to convince Hegseth that the US needs to offer a security guarantees in order for the plan to work. “That’s a work in progress,” admitted one British official, with studied understatement.

The latest headlines

What we’re hearing

Farmers across the US are already struggling because of depressed commodity prices. With Trump’s tariffs on Mexico and Canada — and follow-on retaliatory levies — rural America is bracing for impact. [Free to read]

“Contrary to what the president thinks, this means nothing but pain,” said Aaron Lehman, head of the Iowa Farmers Union. “Our domestic markets aren’t prepared to pick up the slack and that means lower prices for what we grow.”

While farmers supported Trump’s goal of ensuring fair trade with other nations, his current plans were going to hurt, said Zippy Duvall, head of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

“For the third straight year, farmers are losing money on almost every major crop planted,” said Duvall. “Adding even more costs and reducing markets for American agricultural goods could create an economic burden some farmers may not be able to bear.”

After Washington hit most Canadian and Mexican imports with 25 per cent tariffs this week and outlined plans to double levies on Chinese products, Beijing responded by threatening 10 per cent to 15 per cent tariffs on US agricultural goods from March 10. Canada has imposed levies on US imports, and Mexico said it would follow suit.

“Farmers are frustrated,” said Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association. “Tariffs are not something to take lightly and ‘have fun’ with.”

“Not only do they hit our family businesses squarely in the wallet, but they rock a core tenet on which our trading relationships are built, and that is reliability,” he added.

Meanwhile, other nations are well positioned to step in if trade tensions prompt importers to turn their backs on the US. Brazil and other soyabean producers were expecting abundant crops this year, Ragland said, and “are primed to meet any demand stemming from a renewed US-China trade war”.

Viewpoints

• Economics commentator Chris Giles has a useful primer on the 10 things you should know about Trump’s tariffs but were afraid to ask.

• Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night is more likely to be remembered as a spectacle than for the content of what he said, writes Edward Luce.

• Elon Musk is the fox in the henhouse of science, argues Anjana Ahuja, as critics within the UK’s Royal Society protest against fellow member Musk’s role in threatening scientific research.

• The Washington strategy team at Jefferies sought to find out whether there’s any truth to Doge’s claim to have saved $105bn. The takeaway: no, writes Bryce Elder in Alphaville.