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Trump’s New Africa Policy Focuses on Deals… and China

U.S. foreign policy towards Africa has been totally upended since Donald Trump returned to power earlier this year. Gone are the decades-old humanitarian programs that have been replaced by a new strategy that focuses on expanding U.S. commercial ties and countering ...

Chinese Perspectives on Trump’s Middle East Tour

By Giorgia Facchini From May 13 to May 16, Donald Trump embarked on his first major international trip of his second term, a four-day tour of the Gulf, with the U.S. President visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates ...

Grassroots Diplomacy in Dairi: How a Small Indonesian Community is Challenging China’s Zinc Ambitions

The sounds of mining machinery in the highlands of Indonesia’s North Sumatra province have fallen silent — not due to proactive government intervention or seamless regulatory enforcement, but because of relentless grassroots resistance. A controversial mining project in the Bukit Barisan ...

Asian Markets Wobble as Trump-Xi Talks Offset by Musk Row

Asian markets stuttered Friday as optimism from "very positive" talks between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping was wiped out by the stunning public row between the U.S. leader and Elon Musk. The much-anticipated discussions between the heads of the world's ...

ASEAN, Gulf, and China Signal New Phase in Global South Climate Leadership

For decades, global climate action has been largely shaped by the Global North—through frameworks like the Paris Agreement and funding mechanisms such as the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JET-P). These initiatives have set the tone, the goals, and the financial flows, often leaving countries in the Global ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

How to Lure Chinese Financing Back to the Global South: Report

Global South countries face increasing financing pressure, endangering their ability to keep developing while also implementing measures to deal with a growing climate crisis. The disruption of global trade is coupled with a larger megatrend: flows of international capital to the developing world have turned negative. This means that countries are now routinely paying more to service loans than they receive in disbursements.

The vast majority of Global South borrowers ...

Trump’s Middle East Pivot Aims to Counter China’s Rising Influence

By Maria Papageorgiou The U.S. president, Donald Trump, claimed he was able to secure deals totalling more than $2 trillion for the U.S. on his tour of the Gulf states in May. Trump said “there has never been anything like” the amount ...