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Xi Jinping’s Egypt Visit
By the Basilinna Team
Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded a two-day state visit to Egypt this week, his first visit to the country in a decade. Marking 70 years of diplomatic relations between Egypt and China.
Xi Jinping’s Cultural Diplomacy in Cairo
By Deborah Lehr, Chair and CEO
When President Xi Jinping arrived in Cairo this week for his first state visit to Egypt in a decade, trade, investment and geopolitics were inevitably high on the agenda. But Xi also made something else unusually prominent: culture.
Tech and Trade Strategic Insights: Beyond the Headlines
By Jake E. Jennings, Chair of Technology and Trade
Canada’s Section 338 Tariffs Take Effect as Commerce Narrows Auto Relief and Bundles in Security: Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s late narrowing of Section 232 auto tariff relief to light vehicles, paired with a security-adjacent package on export controls, critical minerals, and defense, drove the talks’ collapse.
China-Arab Cooperation Extends Beyond Oil And Into The Desert
By Deborah Lehr, Chair and CEO
At a time of geopolitical competition and shifting alliances, China and the Arab world are finding common ground around a problem they share: the desert.
Between Security & Commerce
By the Basilinna Team
President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Egypt, his first in a decade, highlights China’s deepening economic and political engagement across MENA. But this does not mean the region is shifting from the United States to China. The U.S. remains the region’s primary defense and advanced technology partner, while China is increasingly central to trade, infrastructure, manufacturing and investment.
Tech and Trade Strategic Insights: Beyond the Headlines
By Jake E. Jennings, Chair of Technology and Trade
USMCA Compliance Offers No Shield From the Section 338 Tariffs: Canada and the United States closed out more than a dozen ministerial-level contacts without a deal.
Monitoring Report: 2026 Iran War
By the Basilinna team
The interim U.S.–Iran memorandum of understanding signed in June remains suspended as a formal ceasefire but still provides the principal diplomatic framework for negotiations. Since late July, however, the conflict has entered another volatile phase in which military escalation and diplomacy have proceeded simultaneously.
Tech and Trade Strategic Insights: Beyond the Headlines
By Jake E. Jennings, Chair of Technology and Trade
Tariff Risk Is Shifting Across Legal Authorities: Companies should map product-level exposure across Sections 301 and 338, preserve records supporting exclusions, and adjust contracts and sourcing before new duties take effect.
Adaptation Is No Longer Optional
By Deborah Lehr, Chair and CEO
Recent geopolitical shocks have forced a fundamental reassessment of risk. War, supply chain disruptions, and rising fragmentation have shown that resilience can no longer be assumed, but it must be built. While attention has focused on geopolitical risk, climate risk, equally consequential, is now converging with it.
Tech and Trade Strategic Insights: Beyond the Headlines
By Jake E. Jennings, Chair of Technology and Trade
Parallel Tariff Actions Require Flexible Planning; Importers should prepare for multiple duty scenarios by modeling procurement and pricing strategies against overlapping trade actions that could quickly alter landed costs across major sourcing markets.

