From Jacopo Dettoni

May 1, 2025 

Welcome everyone to a new issue of Beyond Borders. 

If you want to have further proof of the tectonic geopolitical shifts that have occurred over the past 10 years, look no further than Darwin Port, Australia’s most strategic port. Back in 2015, the Aussie government granted Landbridge, a Shandong-based private company believed to have close ties with the Chinese Communist Party, a 99-year lease to operate and develop the port’s commercial operations – yes, that’s 99 years! Back then, its opportunities outweighed the risks, but the calculus is very different in this day and age. With the country heading to the polls on May 3, both contending parties are promising to claw back the port one way or another. Easier said than done, though, as Danielle reports in the story below. 

Elsewhere, I would say that one of the most notable casualties of Donald Trump’s small state drive was the United States Agency for International Development, mostly known as USAID. When president John F. Kennedy established USAID in 1961, he argued that foreign aid can be “an effective instrument of our overall efforts for world peace and security”. About 64 years later, Donald Trump used the opposite argument to do away with USAID. “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values,” reads the executive order he signed on January 20, which sealed the fate of the development agency. The abrupt termination of USAID sent shockwaves through the world of investment promotion. Many national agencies in the developing world relied on USAID funding for promotion and economic development activities. Life after USAID, or rather budgets after USAID, have to be reinvented, as Malcolm Beith finds out. 

Meanwhile, Alex set out to explore the UK’s real potential to become a hotbed for artificial intelligence and provide a reality-check for the AI ambitions of the Labour government. 

That’s it for this week. We love to hear from our readers, get in touch at [email protected]