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In early spring, the first wave of involuntary returns of Pakistani laborers from the United Arab Emirates slipped quietly across border checkpoints and into rural communities across Pakistan, with little fanfare and no advance warning. Men arrived back to their hometowns empty-handed, catching their families completely off guard. Within weeks, however, similar cases began to emerge from every corner of the country, forming a pattern that has sparked outrage and sectarian concern across South Asia and the Gulf.

According to interviews with multiple Shia community leaders conducted by Middle East Eye, thousands of Pakistani workers – the vast majority of whom identify as Shia Muslim and had lived and worked in the UAE for decades – have been expelled from the Gulf state since mid-April in a campaign shrouded in official secrecy. None of the deportees interviewed received formal charges, advanced explanation, or access to legal appeal before being detained and placed on repatriation flights. For many of the men affected, the message is clear: their religious identity is the only explanation for their expulsion.

“They did not tell us any reason,” explained Hussain Turi, a 45-year-old former taxi driver whose home district of Khurram, located along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, has received nearly 200 deported residents from the UAE in just a few months. “But we understood. Our only crime is being Shia.”

Deportees describe a sudden, opaque process that leaves no room for pushback or clarification. Workers report being summoned to local police stations with no stated reason, held for days in overcrowded detention facilities and jails, and flown directly to Pakistan without ever being permitted to consult a lawyer, hear a formal accusation, or challenge their expulsion. Many had spent decades working low-wage jobs in construction, transportation, and service roles across the UAE, sending consistent remittances that supported entire extended families back in Pakistan.

Similar patterns of targeted deportation of Pakistani Shia workers have been reported in Qatar earlier this year, drawing broader international attention to the issue after accounts spread across social media and international news outlets. Indian Shia organizations, including the All India Shia Personal Law Board, have also raised alarms over rising detentions and mistreatment of Indian Shia workers in multiple Gulf states, most notably the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan’s federal government has pushed back hard against these claims, dismissing all reporting of sect-based targeting as bad-faith propaganda. In a May 8 statement, the country’s interior ministry said that “all such reporting is malafide and part of vicious propaganda by vested interests,” adding that no country or sect-specific deportation campaign is underway, including in the UAE.

But despite official denials, on-the-ground interviews with community leaders, deportees, and activists across multiple Pakistani provinces confirm that Shia workers have been disproportionately affected by the recent wave of expulsions. Prominent Shia cleric Allama Amin Shaheedi estimates that as many as 15,000 Pakistani Shia have either been deported or denied re-entry to the UAE in recent months, though the lack of official data and the secrecy surrounding the campaign make independent verification of the total scale impossible.

Many deportees have requested anonymity or only agreed to speak on condition of being identified by their surname, fearing that public criticism will permanently bar them from returning to the Gulf to recover left-behind savings, businesses, vehicles, or unpaid wages. Even so, accounts collected across Pakistan are nearly identical in their description of how detentions and expulsions unfolded.

“They approached me directly and asked for my ID. They already knew exactly who I was,” said Qaisar, a Shia man deported to Pakistan’s Chakwal District in Punjab, who described being intercepted by security officials at Dubai’s flagship Dubai Mall after being flagged via closed-circuit surveillance.

Multiple deportees and community advocates say the campaign is rooted in a years-long systematic surveillance and profiling program targeted explicitly at Shia religious identity. The most commonly cited practice is mandatory biometric scanning of Emirates ID cards for all worshippers entering imambargahs – Shia congregation halls – a security requirement that interviewees say is almost never enforced at Sunni mosques across the UAE.

Deportees and advocates argue that biometric data, identity records, and attendance logs collected at Shia religious sites over years have been used by UAE security agencies to map Shia religious networks and flag individuals for deportation. While no independent official evidence has confirmed this data collection practice, first-hand accounts consistently point to a coordinated system of religious tracking.

“At the imambargahs, they ask us to scan our Emirates ID cards before entering,” said Abbas, a former employee of an architectural firm in Dubai who was deported to Lahore in late April. “People became afraid of attending because they believed their names were being recorded.”

The dragnet has even accidentally swept up non-Shia workers who associated with Shia communities. Raziq, a Sunni laborer from Sargodha in Punjab, told MEE he was deported after being misidentified as Shia, because he regularly visited a local imambargah to access free meals he could not otherwise afford. “Despite being Sunni, I was deported for being Shia,” he said.

Community members also allege that in recent years, UAE visa and employment permit officials have increasingly delayed, rejected, or suspended applications from Pakistanis who carry surnames traditionally associated with Shia communities, including Zaidi, Askari, Jafri, Hussain, Hasan, Turi, and Bangash. Applicants from Pakistani districts with large Shia populations, such as Khurram, Kohat, Quetta, Hunza, and Skardu, also report facing heightened, unexplained scrutiny during immigration and employment screening. Some applicants report being subjected to months-long unexplained “security checks,” while others say employers now quietly avoid hiring workers from perceived Shia backgrounds to avoid drawing scrutiny from security officials. MEE was unable to independently verify the full scale of these alleged restrictions, and UAE authorities have not issued any public comment on claims of surname-based profiling.

Many deportees also say UAE security officials confiscated their bank cards, cash, and mobile phones before they were deported, leaving them stranded upon arrival in Pakistan with no access to their life savings or personal belongings. Others report being denied the opportunity to contact their employers, collect unpaid months of wages, or retrieve personal property before being forced onto repatriation flights.

“Nobody accused us of a crime. Nobody showed us evidence,” said Haider Kazmi, an IT professional who had lived and worked in Dubai for a decade before his expulsion. “They looked at our faith and decided we no longer belonged there.” Kazmi added that the abrupt, unaccountable process left many deportees feeling deeply humiliated and dehumanized. “It was painful,” he said. “But as Shias, we are taught that hardship and persecution have always been part of our history.”

Since the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized relations between the UAE and Israel, Shia expatriates across the Gulf report a sharp deterioration in the security environment for public Shia religious practice. While Ashura commemorations and private majalis (religious council gatherings) are still permitted in some private locations, public Shia mourning rituals and religious events have come under steadily increasing surveillance, with worshippers facing detention and deportation. Human Rights Watch documented a clear rise in restrictions on Shia religious expression in the UAE as early as late 2020.

Security analysts and community leaders agree that the recent wave of deportations is directly tied to escalating regional geopolitical tensions reshaping the Gulf, specifically the sharpened confrontation between Iran, the United States, and Israel that began on February 28. Gulf states including the UAE and Saudi Arabia have long viewed Shia communities and religious networks through the lens of potential Iranian influence, a perspective that hardened after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and intensified following the 2011 Arab uprisings. During periods of heightened regional conflict, these suspicions translate into increased scrutiny of Shia expatriate communities from Pakistan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

At the center of Gulf security concerns is the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih, or “Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist,” the ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran developed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the 1979 revolution. The doctrine grants Iran’s supreme leader sweeping religious and political authority, which adherents recognize as extending beyond Iran’s borders to Shia communities globally. While many Shia Muslims and senior Shia clerics around the world reject this claim of transnational authority, Gulf security establishments argue that it fosters divided loyalties that threaten the legitimacy of ruling monarchies.

These longstanding anxieties were amplified on April 20, when the UAE’s State Security Department announced it had dismantled a clandestine network allegedly tied to Iran, claiming the investigation uncovered links to Wilayat al-Faqih ideology, reinforcing existing fears of Iranian influence among expatriate Shia communities. Regional tensions deteriorated even further after the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a joint US-Israeli strike on Tehran on February 28, an event that sparked widespread unrest across Muslim-majority nations, including violent Shia-led protests in Pakistan that left more than 35 people dead. The subsequent succession of Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new supreme leader has deepened Gulf fears that Iran’s ideological project will continue unchanged.

For Shia communities across the Gulf, the convergence of the Abraham Accords and the post-February war on Iran has supercharged official paranoia about perceived Shia loyalties, leaving tens of thousands of working-class Pakistanis displaced, stripped of their livelihoods, and with little legal recourse to reclaim their lives in the Gulf.

A coalition of pro-Palestinian advocacy groups — the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and No Harbour for Genocide (NHFG) — has sounded a urgent alarm over a surge of military-grade material shipments from India to Israeli weapons manufacturers, uncovering six separate consignments of military-spec steel that activists say are destined for artillery production for the Israeli military.

The six shipments, tracked by the coalition, collectively total roughly 806 tonnes of military-grade steel. Activists calculate this volume is sufficient to manufacture up to 17,458 155mm artillery shells, a core ammunition type used extensively by the Israeli military in its ongoing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. Three of the shipments, transported by Geneva-based global shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), are currently detained at Italian ports: two in Calabria’s Gioia Tauro and one in Cagliari, Sardinia. Activists are escalating pressure on Italian authorities to conduct full inspections of the cargo. MSC has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Middle East Eye (MEE) on the matter. The remaining three shipments were diverted away from Mediterranean routes and rerouted to Sri Lanka, with shippers reportedly searching for an alternative path to deliver the cargo to Israel, according to the coalition.

Activists have confirmed all six shipments originate from R L Steels & Energy Limited, a firm based in Aurangabad, India, and are ultimately bound for a key ammunition production facility owned by Elbit Systems Land (formerly IMI Systems) in Ramat Hasharon, Israel. The $1 million worth of cargo departed India’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Maharashtra between January and March 2026. This is not the first time the Indian firm has supplied military material to Israeli arms manufacturers: in October 2025, R L Steels delivered 125 tonnes of military-grade steel to Israel as part of a larger 440-tonne military cargo that also included 175 tonnes of 155mm artillery shell bodies and 140 tonnes of mortar component parts, according to prior reporting from The Ditch.

Ilham Yaseen, military embargo coordinator for the BDS movement, told MEE that the series of shipments expose what the movement calls a ‘flood’ of military supplies flowing from India to Israel amid ongoing Israeli military campaigns. Founded in 2005, BDS organizes nonviolent pressure campaigns to push Israel to comply with international law. Yaseen said the movement is demanding global pressure to block these shipments from reaching Israeli forces, and to hold both India’s far-right national government and any complicit Indian private firms accountable for facilitating what the movement calls Israeli atrocity crimes in Palestinian and Lebanese territories.

Activists emphasize that the shipments come in a clear context: India has stepped in to fill critical gaps in Israeli military supply chains that have emerged over 2.5 years of active conflict in Gaza, despite a 2024 International Court of Justice ruling that calls on all UN member states to avoid any action that could support Israel’s military campaign, which has been formally recognized as genocide by the United Nations, hundreds of genocide scholars, and leading global human rights organizations. Since the outbreak of full-scale war in October 2023, more than 200,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or injured, and activists note that even amid a recent temporary ceasefire, what they describe as a ‘slow-motion genocide’ continues in the besieged enclave. Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon have also killed more than 3,000 people since hostilities escalated in 2025.

A NHFG spokesperson explained that while Israel maintains a large domestic military industrial complex, it relies on imported raw materials for large-scale ammunition production. ‘This military steel is going directly to the Ramat Hasharon ammunition plant, which produces no civilian goods — 100 percent of its output is for military use,’ the spokesperson confirmed. The Ramat Hasharon facility was previously scheduled for permanent closure, but the urgent need for uninterrupted artillery production amid the current conflicts has led the Israeli government to keep it open and even ramp up output, according to activists.

Israel’s demand for 155mm artillery shells surged immediately after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel: Israeli forces fired more than 100,000 shells into Gaza and Lebanon in the first few months of the conflict alone, depleting stockpiles so rapidly that the Israeli government requested emergency additional shipments of 155mm rounds from the United States as early as mid-October 2023. India has a well-documented recent history of expanding military shipments to Israel: in early 2024, New Delhi delivered Indian-assembled Hermes 900 drones to Israel, followed by multiple shipments of other military equipment including rockets. NHFG says the newly tracked steel shipments are critical to helping Israel resolve its ongoing 155mm shell shortfall.

India’s federal government has already faced sustained criticism from domestic and international civil society for its ongoing military trade with Israel. New Delhi abstained from a April 2024 United Nations Human Rights Council vote that called for a global arms embargo on Israel, and in September 2025, the Indian Supreme Court immediately dismissed a petition filed by Indian activists and lawyers seeking a formal ban on all arms shipments to Israel.

Yaseen noted that imposing a military embargo on Israel at this juncture is both a moral and legal obligation for all states, adding: ‘India was once a global leader advancing UN principles and multilateralism rooted in justice, freedom, and equality. Today, its far-right government has turned India into a world leader in arming genocide and apartheid.’

Activists also uncovered evidence that shippers have deliberately structured the supply chain to obscure the origin and final destination of the cargo. Four of the six shipments share identical export codes and product grades, and are routed through a procurement intermediary called Banyan Group International (BGI), a firm that markets itself as a bridge connecting Israeli companies seeking to source raw materials from Indian suppliers. BGI did not respond to MEE’s request for comment. Activists say the use of intermediaries is a deliberate tactic to separate the end Israeli buyer from the Indian source of the material to avoid scrutiny.

As activists began tracking the MSC-chartered vessels carrying the cargo starting in February 2026, shippers have repeatedly altered routes and moved between ports to avoid detection, echoing tactics documented in an April 2026 NHFG report that found Greek shipping firms have hidden military cargo destinations and disabled vessel tracking systems to bypass Turkey’s official trade embargo on Israel. The current shipments have already faced widespread opposition across Europe: Spanish authorities initially blocked one vessel from docking, Portuguese parliamentarians raised formal questions about a port call in Sines, and Greek dockworkers refused to unload the suspected cargo, before three shipments were ultimately detained in Italy for potential inspection.

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic domestic intelligence service, has released a controversial new dossier categorizing grassroots secular pro-Palestinian organizing within Germany as a form of extremism, triggering widespread debate over civil liberties, political speech, and the country’s official policy toward the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The document outlines three core focus areas: the alleged ties between antisemitism and secular pro-Palestinian extremism, common symbols and markers used by activist groups, and cross-ideological networking between pro-Palestinian organizers, left-wing extremists and Islamists. BfV notes that the movement is highly diverse, made up of long-standing established groups as well as newer formations that emerged following the October 7, 2023 attacks led by Hamas. According to the dossier, all these factions are united by what BfV frames as inherent hostility toward Israel, regularly rejecting the country’s right to exist and spreading rhetoric that runs counter to norms of international understanding.

The report specifically calls out pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, noting that in Berlin, the epicenter of German pro-Palestinian activism, events frequently feature anti-Israel and occasionally antisemitic statements and displays. The dossier names the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as key “relevant actors,” claiming that even groups that publicly support a two-state solution implicitly endorse terrorist activity by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the PFLP, and frame the October 7 attacks as legitimate resistance. It also warns that so-called extremist Palestinian individuals are driving rising radicalization and increasing willingness to use violence.

In its section on protest symbols, BfV even frames widely used pro-Palestinian messaging as evidence of extremism. The popular slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and the sliced watermelon symbol — which uses the fruit’s red, green, black and white colors to echo the Palestinian flag, often as a subtle nod to Palestinian solidarity when public display of the flag is restricted — are both labeled as attempts to deny Israel’s right to exist. “The outline of the entire State of Israel is depicted in the colours of the Palestinian flag (as a sliced watermelon), thereby denying Israel’s right to exist,” the report reads. The dossier also alleges that pro-Palestinian extremists act as a unifying ideological bridge between disparate extremist factions across the political and religious spectrum, from Islamist groups to German and Turkish left-wing and even right-wing extremist networks, exploiting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to radicalize mainstream civil society. The report only mentions the word “genocide” once when referring to accusations against Israel, referring to the death of more than 73,000 Palestinians and widespread destruction of Gaza simply as the “situation.” Notably, the BfV’s broad claims of antisemitism and extremism are not backed by specific cited examples in the document.

The release of the dossier comes as German law enforcement has already waged a sweeping crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country, with broad political backing rooted in Germany’s official “Staatsräson” — a core state principle that enshrines unconditional support for Israel as a central part of German national identity, a commitment tied to the country’s Nazi-era history of the Holocaust that killed six million Jews. In recent months, Berlin police have repeatedly broken up peaceful pro-Palestinian gatherings, arresting dozens of demonstrators including minor protesters. Video footage from multiple days of actions in April 2026 shows officers forcibly dragging non-violent protesters to the ground and aggressively restraining them, with no evidence of protester violence prior to police intervention.

One protester interviewed by Middle East Eye, whose reporting first documented the crackdown, said demonstrators have faced ongoing repression simply for their Palestinian identity and opposition to Israel’s military campaign. “They [have been] arrest[ing] us for three years until now,” the protester said. “Just because we are Palestinian, and they are committed to a genocide. They are fascism.”

The repression extends beyond street protests. In March 2026, families and legal representatives of anti-arms trade activists who were arrested for breaking into a facility run by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer in Germany accused authorities of subjecting the detainees to extreme solitary confinement under harsh, restrictive prison conditions.

Germany’s unwavering political support for Israel has shaped both its domestic and foreign policy in recent years. Berlin is the world’s second-largest arms supplier to Israel, trailing only the United States. While Berlin briefly paused some arms transfers in October 2025 after Israel launched its ground offensive to seize full control of Gaza City, shipments resumed just one month later. In April 2026, Germany joined Italy to block a joint motion put forward by Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia at the EU level to suspend the bloc’s trade agreement with Israel over its conduct in Gaza. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul dismissed the proposal as inappropriate, arguing that critical conversations about Gaza must happen through constructive dialogue with Israel rather than punitive measures.

The BfV’s core claim that pro-Palestinian activism amounts to extremism because it rejects Israel’s right to exist has also sparked legal and political pushback. International law scholars note that while defenders of Israel regularly invoke the country’s right to exist, no provision of international law guarantees this right to any sovereign state; statehood is widely recognized as a political reality rather than a legally granted status. Critics also argue that the BfV’s framing conflates criticism of Israeli government policy with antisemitism, noting that the agency’s claim that activists fail to distinguish between the Israeli state and global Jewish communities echoes the very conflation it accuses protesters of making. Since the start of Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza, the country has expanded its territorial control through force, having already displaced 750,000 Palestinians during its founding in 1948. Today, Israeli forces occupy more than half of the Gaza Strip and have advanced into southern Lebanon, redrawing de facto borders across the region.

As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to arrive in Beijing for high-stakes talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the global economic and geopolitical balance between the world’s two largest powers has shifted dramatically—far faster than anyone in Washington predicted 15 months ago, when the second Trump administration took office.

When Trump’s second term began, his top advisors projected unbridled confidence that sweeping new tariffs on Chinese goods would force Beijing to make sweeping concessions, rewriting the terms of the $53 trillion U.S.-China economic relationship to overwhelmingly benefit Washington. Today, that narrative has flipped almost entirely: in the assessment of Chinese analysts and global economists alike, Xi now holds nearly all the leverage as the two leaders meet.

China’s state-run Global Times has framed the moment bluntly, describing the U.S. as a “giant with a limp” heading into the summit. The label comes as Washington grapples with overlapping crises: an escalating conflict with Iran that has pushed oil prices above $100 per barrel, fractured alliances strained by Trump’s tariff policies, and a series of international court rulings that have eroded U.S. global leverage. Chinese state media has emphasized that it is Trump traveling to Beijing in search of a trade agreement, not the reverse, arguing Washington needs a deal far more urgently than Beijing does. Compounding this, any path to reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz, disrupted by the Iran conflict, may hinge on Beijing using its longstanding diplomatic influence in Tehran—turning the tables on the leverage Trump once expected to wield over China.

The shifting dynamic is on clear display in U.S. domestic economic data. April 2026 saw U.S. year-on-year inflation hit 3.8%, a three-year high, driven largely by energy price spikes stemming from the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran. This inflation surge has dragged down Trump’s approval ratings and erased any chance the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year, a step Trump has repeatedly demanded. Even more consequential, analysts argue, is that Trump’s aggressive trade and technology policies have inadvertently accelerated China’s rise as a global leader in trade and high-value innovation.

More than a decade after Xi launched a national strategy to revitalize China’s economic standing, and 11 years after the introduction of the “Made in China 2025” industrial upgrading initiative, the strategy is delivering tangible results. One prominent example is electric vehicle giant BYD, which has surged past Tesla in global sales and upended the long-dominant European auto industry. Other Chinese tech firms, from AI startup DeepSeek to telecom leader Huawei, have developed successful workarounds to U.S. export controls, proving that Washington’s decoupling efforts have only incentivized faster domestic innovation and self-reliance in China’s high-tech sector.

Trump’s repeated attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve, meanwhile, have undermined global trust in the U.S. dollar just as U.S. national debt approaches the $40 trillion mark. This erosion of confidence has given new momentum to Xi’s long-running campaign to internationalize the yuan, a goal that has gained unexpected traction amid Trump’s post-inauguration policy volatility. From broad-based tariffs to aggressive military adventurism in Venezuela and Iran, to unfettered fiscal expansion and attacks on independent U.S. institutions, every major policy move of Trump’s second term has weakened global trust in U.S. assets.

As Middle Eastern Gulf states grow increasingly skeptical of U.S. security guarantees amid ongoing wartime disruptions to energy trade, Beijing sees a historic opening to build a yuan-denominated energy settlement framework once hostilities end. This could pave the way for the long-discussed “petroyuan” that Chinese leaders have long envisioned, though economists caution full global adoption of the yuan as a primary energy currency remains decades away.

Union Bancaire Privee economist Carlos Casanova notes that while the trajectory of yuan internationalization is clear, broad adoption is unlikely in the near term. Gulf monarchies still rely on U.S. security guarantees and maintain deep financial ties to U.S. capital markets. For the yuan to become a dominant global energy currency, Casanova explains, Beijing would need to complete a demanding three-part agenda: deepen existing divides between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, build up Iran’s military capacity to challenge U.S. regional security dominance (a step that would be destabilizing even for China), and fully liberalize China’s capital account while growing global demand for yuan-denominated assets. “Even under favorable conditions, this would likely take decades,” Casanova said.

Still, Trump’s confrontational approach to the BRICS bloc—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—has only accelerated moves away from the dollar. After BRICS leaders moved forward with plans to develop a dollar alternative, Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on all BRICS imports, a move that reinforced global fatigue with Washington’s unilateral bullying. The policy chaos created by the Trump administration is already doing more to advance the BRICS’ de-dollarization agenda than the bloc could have achieved on its own.

Even close U.S. allies are growing wary of Washington’s economic trajectory. During recent meetings between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Japanese officials in Tokyo, the public agenda focused on the weak yen and Japan’s support for the U.S. in the Iran conflict. Behind closed doors, analysts say Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi almost certainly sought assurances about the safety of Japan’s $1.2 trillion holdings of U.S. Treasuries—the largest foreign stockpile of U.S. government debt in the world.

Those concerns are not unfounded. Recent U.S. data shows annual tax revenues fell 17% year-on-year in April, typically the peak month for tax collections. Nearly 17 months into the second Trump administration, policies from tariffs to inflated energy costs have left U.S. households under severe financial strain. A recent Gallup poll found 47% of Americans rate current economic conditions as “poor,” a seven-point increase since March, while 73% say conditions are worsening. A separate Fox News poll found 70% of respondents believe the economy is deteriorating, matching the record high set in 2023.

A core flaw of Trump’s China strategy, analysts argue, is that it has failed to improve U.S. competitiveness at home. Tariffs, a blunt policy tool, have acted more as a political gimmick than a roadmap to revitalize U.S. innovation, strengthen human capital, and preserve the dollar and U.S. Treasuries as the foundation of the global financial system. In fact, Enodo Economics analyst Diana Choyleva notes that U.S. efforts to block China’s technological progress have had the opposite effect, speeding China’s shift up the global value chain toward greater self-reliance and innovation.

Trump’s tariffs have also benefited China in unintended ways, by straining relations between Washington and key U.S. allies across the Indo-Pacific, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations. Growing distrust between Washington and these regional democracies has increased China’s diplomatic influence in the region, allowing Xi to position China as a more reliable steward of global free trade than Trump. The Chinese government continues to benefit from Trump’s first-term decision to withdraw from the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the second Trump administration’s continued focus on narrow bilateral trade deals rather than building a multilateral bloc to counter Chinese influence.

Far from curbing China’s trade ambitions, Trump’s tariffs have coincided with China posting a record annual trade surplus of $1.2 trillion in 2025. While the Xi administration has invested trillions over the past decade to dominate future-focused industries including electric vehicles, renewable energy, aerospace, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, green infrastructure and robotics, the Trump administration has laid out no comparable plan to boost U.S. competitiveness in semiconductors, infrastructure or climate action. In fact, Trump has rolled back support for clean energy sectors, dismissing electric vehicles, solar and wind power as “woke” policies while prioritizing fossil fuel development.

To date, Trump’s economic strategy has relied almost entirely on tax cuts, expansionary fiscal policy and repeated demands for lower Federal Reserve interest rates to support growth. A recent Supreme Court ruling striking down Trump’s unilateral tariff authority has added new stress to U.S. government finances, pushing the national debt to over 100% of GDP. “Tariffs had been functioning as a shadow tax that helped fund spending without explicitly raising taxes,” explained Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Siebert Financial. “Remove that and the deficit widens, borrowing rises, and historically that is the type of development that leans on the bond market and pressures yields higher.”

Given this shift in leverage, Xi is unlikely to grant Trump the sweeping “grand bargain” trade deal he is seeking ahead of 2026 U.S. midterm elections. Most economists predict Beijing will offer only small, symbolic concessions—such as new agreements to purchase Boeing aircraft and U.S. soybeans—with a commitment to continue talks later this year.

Fidelity Investments economist Peiqian Liu notes this Beijing meeting is just the first of several planned encounters between the two leaders in 2026, with the APEC Summit scheduled for Shenzhen in November, the G20 meeting in Miami in December, and a potential reciprocal visit by Xi to the U.S. later this year, possibly before the midterm elections. “Given the array of issues pending discussion, including trade, technology, supply chain controls, and chokepoints — as well as other geopolitical issues such as Taiwan and Iran — we expect the leader-to-leader conversation to be more high-level and broad-based,” Liu said.

The ongoing Iran crisis has created an awkward backdrop for the summit. “It’s awkward that, as the leaders meet, the U.S. Navy is blockading the Strait of Hormuz and intercepting tankers bound for China, Iran’s largest crude buyer,” noted Rush Doshi, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Meanwhile, Beijing is providing political and possibly intelligence support to Tehran and could be seeking to renew flows of drone parts, air defense equipment, and missiles. Neither side is likely to make progress on this issue, but the fact that the summit appears ready to proceed despite this unusual situation is proof both leaders want the optics of stability even if its foundations are shaky.”

It is important to note that China still faces significant domestic economic headwinds: the ongoing property sector crisis continues to erode business and household confidence, local government finances are severely strained, and youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. Even so, China’s export sector has held up remarkably well amid global economic weakness: April 2026 saw year-on-year export growth of 14.1%, with passenger vehicle exports surging nearly 85% from a year earlier.

Ultimately, the Beijing summit will underscore a core reality: Trump’s campaign to halt China’s economic rise has backfired dramatically, leaving Washington empty-handed in its quest to rewrite the U.S.-China trade relationship. While a public show of dialogue between Trump and Xi will be a welcome signal for global markets—any step that eases tensions between the two largest economies is an unqualified positive for the global economy—the idea that Trump will leave Beijing having imposed his will on China reads more as a political fantasy than a plausible outcome.

A tense confrontation broke out Wednesday inside the Philippine Senate building in Manila after law enforcement attempted to execute an arrest warrant for a sitting Philippine senator, who faces a murder charge classified as a crime against humanity from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Shots were fired during the operation, leaving the complex locked down in an extended standoff as of Wednesday’s initial reports.

The clash unfolded just 48 hours after the Netherlands-based global tribunal unsealed an arrest warrant first issued in November for Ronald Marapon dela Rosa, 64, who served as chief of the Philippine national police during the tenure of former president Rodrigo Duterte. Dela Rosa was one of the primary architects of Duterte’s nationwide anti-drug crackdown, a campaign that resulted in the deaths of thousands of mostly low-level drug suspects between 2016 and the present. The warrant accuses dela Rosa of direct responsibility for the murder of at least 32 people between July 2016 and April 2018, the period when he oversaw the national police force.

In public comments following the unsealing of the warrant, dela Rosa has stated he will vigorously challenge the ICC’s authority and pursue all available legal channels to avoid extradition. The ICC has not yet released an official statement in response to the violent standoff in the Philippine capital.

This latest development builds on years of legal tension between the Philippines and the ICC. In 2019, the country formally withdrew from the court’s Rome Statute, a move that came after then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced a preliminary investigation into widespread extrajudicial killings tied to the anti-drug campaign. Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in 2022, has not reversed the withdrawal, but his administration has previously stated it would honor Interpol red notices — global requests to locate and temporarily arrest suspects — if the ICC issued one for former officials linked to the drug war. It remains unclear whether a red notice has been officially issued for dela Rosa as of Wednesday.

Duterte himself was taken into custody last year and transferred to The Hague to face his own charges of crimes against humanity connected to the deadly crackdown, and he remains in detention awaiting trial. Last year, ICC judges rejected a bid from Duterte’s legal team to dismiss the case over the Philippines’ 2019 withdrawal. In their ruling, the judges noted that nations cannot misuse their right to leave the Rome Statute to shield individuals from prosecution for crimes already under active investigation by the court.

Established in 2002, the ICC was created to hold national leaders and senior public officials accountable for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, acting as a court of last resort that only intervenes when a domestic legal system is unable or unwilling to prosecute alleged perpetrators. The court currently counts 125 member states, but three major global powers — the United States, Russia, and China — have never joined. Ukraine became the newest member of the court in January 2025. The institution employs more than 900 people and operates on a 2025 budget of just over 196 million euros, equal to roughly $229 million.

Both the U.S. and Russia have openly opposed the ICC’s authority in recent years. During his second term, former U.S. President Donald Trump imposed economic sanctions on ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, several sitting ICC judges, and Khan’s two deputy prosecutors. Trump has repeatedly accused the court of carrying out “illegitimate and baseless actions” that unfairly target U.S. and Israeli officials. During his first term, Trump also sanctioned Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, a move that was later reversed by the Biden administration. For its part, Russia has rejected the court’s jurisdiction and issued its own arrest warrant for Khan and the judge who signed the 2023 warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over allegations of war crimes in Ukraine. Since the warrant was issued, Putin has traveled to multiple non-member states including China and North Korea, as well as Mongolia, an ICC member state, without facing arrest.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) issued a stark, alarming report on the mounting humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian children in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, revealing that since the start of 2025, Israeli security forces have killed an average of no fewer than one Palestinian child every week.

James Elder, the UNICEF spokesperson speaking on the crisis, confirmed that at least 70 Palestinian children have been killed since January 2025, with hundreds more left with life-altering injuries. He emphasized that children are paying what he called an “intolerable price” for the rapid escalation of Israeli military operations and repeated violent attacks carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities. To date, 850 children have been wounded in violence in the territory, and the vast majority of these injuries are the result of live ammunition fire, according to UNICEF data.

In a breakdown of the threats facing children, Elder noted that the rising civilian casualties are unfolding alongside a historic surge in violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities. Documented assaults targeting children alone include a range of brutal acts: pepper spray attacks, severe beatings, stabbings and shootings. Beyond direct violence, children also face a growing risk of arbitrary arrest and prolonged detention by Israeli forces. Current data shows at least 347 Palestinian children are currently held in Israeli military detention, all detained on alleged security-related offenses.

According to international children’s rights organization Save the Children, Palestinian children remain the only group of children globally that are systematically prosecuted through Israeli military court systems, rather than civilian juvenile justice frameworks. Of the 347 detained children, more than half – 180 – are being held under administrative detention, a long-controversial Israeli policy that permits the imprisonment of Palestinians without formal charge or public trial, with detention terms that can be renewed indefinitely.

Multiple testimonies collected by leading international and local human rights groups, corroborated by independent media reporting, detail consistent patterns of inhumane treatment against detained Palestinian children. Accounts from released detainees document widespread abuse including intentional starvation, physical beatings, sexual violence and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. This systemic risk of detention was expanded further in late 2024, when the Israeli parliament passed a controversial piece of legislation that legally permits the detention of children as young as 12 years old.

Elder stressed that the violent attacks and human rights violations targeting children are not random, isolated incidents. Instead, he argued, they form part of a deliberate, wider pattern of violations that target not just individual children, but their basic human rights, their homes, their schools and the critical infrastructure that their communities rely on to function. Over recent years, Israeli movement restrictions have progressively cut off Palestinian communities in the West Bank from access to basic necessities including clean water, education, safe shelter and emergency healthcare, while severely limiting freedom of movement across the territory.

“What is unfolding is not only an escalation in violence against Palestinian children; it is the steady dismantling of the conditions children need to survive and grow,” Elder told reporters. Education, he added, has become a specific target of sustained assault, turning what should be a routine daily trip to school for thousands of West Bank children into a dangerous journey marked by constant fear.

In 2025 alone, UNICEF has documented 99 separate incidents that have disrupted access to education across the West Bank. These incidents include the killing, detention and wounding of student and education staff, the forced demolition of school buildings, the repurposing of educational facilities for Israeli military use, and widespread restrictions that bar children from reaching their places of study. “Schools, which should be places of safety and stability, are increasingly becoming sites of fear,” Elder said. “Attacks on schools and the denial of children’s access to education are grave violations against children with long-term consequences for their safety, wellbeing, and future.”

Beyond violence and restricted access to services, Elder also drew attention to the rapidly accelerating rate of forced displacement of Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Between January and April 2025 alone, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been forcibly expelled from their homes, over 1,100 of whom are children. This four-month total already exceeds the full-year displacement figures recorded for all of 2024. Critical Palestinian water infrastructure, including community sanitation systems and agricultural irrigation networks, has also been repeatedly targeted for destruction by Israeli forces and settlers.

“This has serious implications for both the Palestinian economy and children’s health, hygiene, and dignity,” Elder said. “Taken together, these patterns reveal an overarching reality: children are being targeted both through direct violence, and through the dismantling of essential systems and services. Their suffering cannot be normalised.”

This report was originally brought to audiences by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.