Washington Edition

This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, economics and politics editor Ben Holland looks at the past week’s progress toward a Trump-Putin summit. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here.

Summit Maneuvers

It’s still not clear when it will happen, where it will happen, who’ll attend or what they’ll discuss — but aside from those details, the long-awaited summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is firming up.

A week of hectic speculation saw both Washington and Moscow voicing optimism that a meeting could potentially be arranged within a matter of days. That remains the latest word as of Friday afternoon, when Trump told reporters in the White House it would happen “very shortly.” And a couple more clues have emerged as to how things could unfold.

Top of Trump’s agenda is ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, so there was a logic to initial reports that suggested the US was pushing for a three-leader summit to include Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But then Trump said it wasn’t a necessary condition, indicating he’d be ready to meet Putin one-on-one, as the Russian leader had long sought.

Trump and Putin in 2019.

That rang alarm bells for some, since it's been a mantra for Ukraine’s Western backers during three-and-a-half years of war that no decisions about the country’s fate should be made without its involvement.

The latest signals about what’s on the table for talks may not assuage such concerns. Washington and Moscow are aiming for a deal to halt the war that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized since the invasion, with Ukraine possibly being forced to give up more, Bloomberg’s Donato Paolo Mancini, Alberto Nardelli and Daryna Krasnolutska reported Friday. They cautioned that proposed terms are still in flux.

As for the summit’s venue, it’s apparently been decided, but not announced. Putin seemed to hint at the United Arab Emirates, but various European locations have been floated too. Trump teased a possible Friday evening announcement, and said the location would be a “very popular one.”

Hours short of the deadline Trump had set for Russia to stop fighting, the prospect of further US sanctions or tariffs — on Russia or its trade partners — remains in play. But the only measure the president has so far spelled out is an extra 25% import duty on India, one of Moscow’s biggest oil customers.

Putin spoke by phone Friday with Indian premier Narendra Modi (and got an invitation to visit later this year), part of a flurry of diplomacy that saw Washington and Moscow consulting with various allies, presumably to pave the way for the main event.

Don’t Miss

The Trump administration is preparing to sell shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an offering that could start as early as this year, according to a senior administration official.

The administration suggested it would issue a new policy clarifying that imports of gold bars shouldn’t be subject tariffs, after a US government agency stunned traders by formally ruling that they would be.

The Department of Justice is investigating New York Attorney General Letitia James over the $454 million civil fraud case she won against Trump before he was elected.

The Trump administration is seeking more than $1 billion from the University of California at Los Angeles in exchange for releasing $584 million in federal research funding that the US froze last week.

St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said the US central bank is still missing more on the inflation side of its mandate than the employment side.

A fight over banking rules between crypto firms and traditional lenders is set to be decided by regulators appointed by Trump, who’s been a vocal supporter of digital currencies.

Trump plans to remove Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long from the job to nominate him for an ambassadorship, according to a White House official.

A federal appeals court threw out a judge’s finding of “probable cause” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for sending accused Venezuelan gang members to an El Salvador prison

Watch & Listen

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., host Joe Mathieu interviewed Wendy Sherman, deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration, about the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

On the program at 5 p.m., he talks with Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute about the latest developments in the trade war.

On the Odd Lots podcast, Bloomberg’s Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal talk to San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly about trends in the US economy, and what she learned during a visit to Alaska. Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

On the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Joe Deaux talks to host David Gura about what he saw on the ground during a trip to Greenland, and the prospects for Trump’s ambition to expand the US presence there. Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Chart of the Day

For Americans to downsize their homes as retirement nears is a longstanding practice — but anyone relying on that pipeline to snap up a property might be in for a wait. The mean probability of changing primary residence over the next year among older US residents dropped to the lowest share in a dozen years, a New York Fed study found. Only around 6% of people older than 60 said they’re planning a move — even lower than the immediate post-pandemic period. Since the survey was started in June 2013, roughly one-in-nine older people typically said they intended to move in the upcoming year. Housing prices have been falling in many parts of Florida, a popular destination for many retirees, which might be one reason for the hesitation right now. -- Alex Tanzi

What’s Next

The consumer price index for July will be released Aug. 12.

The producer price index for July will be reported Aug. 14.

Retail sales for July will be reported on Aug. 15.

The University of Michigan’s preliminary read of consumer sentiment will be released Aug. 15.

The House and Senate are on break until Sept. 2.

Seen Elsewhere

The National Weather Service plans to hire hundreds of new employees, months after it lost more than 500 people to Trump’s sweeping effort to reshape the federal work force, the New York Times reports.

Researchers are reviving the long-abandoned search for measles treatments as a record number of Americans come down with the disease, according to the Wall Street Journal.