Daily News Brief

April 27, 2025

Welcome to CFR’s Daily News Brief. Today we’re covering how U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cuts are affecting the response to Myanmar’s earthquake, as well as...

• Chinese military drills around Taiwan

• Washington’s new report on trade barriers

• The fallout of Marine Le Pen’s conviction

Top of the Agenda

Days have gone by without a U.S. humanitarian team on the ground after Myanmar’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake, a departure from past responses. More than two thousand people have died since Friday’s quake in the war-torn country, state media reported, with the total expected to rise sharply. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said yesterday that a USAID team was being sent to Myanmar.

The U.S. response. Cuts at USAID have hampered Washington’s typical response to a disaster of this scale, multiple news organizations reported. When a 7.8 magnitude quake hit Turkey and Syria in 2023, a U.S. rapid response team was on the ground within a day. By contrast, hours after Friday’s quake in Myanmar, personnel who were preparing a response received termination notices as part of budget cuts. Relationships with groups that would usually distribute relief supplies on the ground have also been severed.

A State Department spokesperson said yesterday that she “would reject the premise that the sign of success is that we are physically there,” adding that Washington was working through experts based in the region and partner countries who were on the ground. The United States has pledged up to $2 million in aid, and U.S. soldiers have assisted in response efforts in nearby Bangkok, where a building collapsed.

Who’s stepping in. China, already an ally of Myanmar’s junta, has been one of the biggest providers of relief so far, with $13.7 million pledged. China, India, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam all dispatched emergency teams and supplies in relief ahead of the United States.

• China’s team includes some four hundred people; they brought heavy equipment to the most-affected areas, the United Nations said. 
• Russia reported flying in 120 rescuers, a medical team, and supplies.
• India sent an aid flight and planned for more flights and navy missions.

The U.S. assessment team is not expected to arrive until tomorrow, the New York Times reported. Responders are most likely to find survivors in the immediate seventy-two-hour window after a quake.

“Due to the multisided civil war and a complete collapse of public services and administration after the coup and the onset of fighting, Myanmar today—already before 2021, one of the poorest states in Asia—is essentially now a failed state, something like Somalia in the 1990s...The country has so few hospitals, even near a significant city like Mandalay, that doctors will be able to treat only a handful of patients injured by the earthquake. The rest will be left on their own.”

—CFR expert Joshua Kurlantzick, Asia Unbound

The History and Future of U.S. Foreign Aid

Kent Nishimura/Reuters

To navigate the current crossroads on foreign aid, experts looked back at its decades long history and forward to how it could be restructured in this CFR meeting.

Beijing’s scrutiny of Panama ports deal. Hong Kong firm CK Hutchison Holdings is expected to miss an April 2 target for selling two ports on the Panama Canal amid a review of the sale by Beijing, unnamed sources told Bloomberg. The planned sale to a consortium led by U.S. firm BlackRock was announced after U.S. President Donald Trump made threats to take control of the canal and criticized Chinese activity there. It is unusual for a Chinese government agency to review an agreement by a Hong Kong-based firm, the Financial Times reported.

TSMC’s domestic expansion. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has opened a new more than $45 billion chip fabrication plant in the southern city of Kaohsiung. Taiwan’s premier said the company would balance its overseas expansion with new domestic investments. It is slated to start production on cutting-edge two-nanometer chips in Taiwan in the second half of this year, while it will only begin production of the same technology at its Arizona plant in around two to three years.

U.S. trade barriers report. Observers are scouring the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual report on foreign trade barriers for clues on which economic practices could be penalized by Trump's reciprocal tariffs, which are due to be announced tomorrow. The barriers listed include digital services taxes, carbon border taxes, and restrictions on transferring data outside of the country, similarly to last year’s report.

More U.S. deportations to El Salvador. The United States transferred seventeen alleged members of crime groups Tren de Aragua and MS-13 to El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday. A State Department spokesperson declined to say what legal authority was used for the transfers. Families and attorneys of some Venezuelans previously sent to El Salvador have contested claims that they were Tren de Aragua members; court papers show that some were accused of gang membership based on factors such as having tattoos.

Chinese drills around Taiwan. China’s military began large-scale drills in the waters and air around Taiwan today in what a military spokesperson called a “severe warning and forceful containment against Taiwan independence.” The previously unannounced drills follow a weekend visit to the region by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Taiwan’s presidential office said China’s “blatant military provocations not only threaten peace in the Taiwan Strait but also undermine security in the whole region.”

Le Pen’s conviction fallout. French far-right politician Marine Le Pen pledged to appeal yesterday’s embezzlement conviction, which blocks her from running in a 2027 presidential election. Foreign officials including Italian far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as well as spokespeople for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the U.S. State Department criticized the ruling. This morning, the leader of her party called for demonstrations against the verdict.

Police response to Zimbabwe protests. Few Zimbabweans attended planned protests against President Emmerson Mnangagwa today after police deployed heavily in the capital, Harare, and other cities. The ruling ZANU-PF party said in January it hoped to extend Mnangagwa’s time in office by two years until 2030. But as the country experiences economic strains, some in his party have called for him to step down.

NATO patrols in the Baltic Sea. No new cases of suspected sabotage of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea have been reported since a NATO monitoring mission began in January. The mission began its work after three such cases were reported in the past year and half. It features surveillance planes and forces from France, the United Kingdom, and United States as well as NATO’s Baltic members. 

Myanmar’s Troubled History

Getty Images

Myanmar’s transition away from full military rule starting in 2011 spurred hopes of democratic reforms, but the military maintained control over much of the government. Read more in this Backgrounder.

• France takes over the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council.

• OPEC+ countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia are due to begin gradually increasing oil output in April.

• A Latin American defense and security trade show begins in Brazil.
• China’s foreign minister holds meetings in Moscow.

Chips and the Future of Computing

Hardware advances are powering the new artificial intelligence era. CFR expert Sebastian Elbaum and Stanford Emerging Technology Review’s Mark Horowitz discuss how the United States can sustain its semiconductor leadership on this episode of The Interconnect.

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