A catastrophic collapse of healthcare services in Malawi a year after US funding cuts is undoing a decade of progress against HIV/AIDS, providers warn, leaving some of the most vulnerable feeling like “living dead”.In the impoverished southern Africa country, the US government’s decision to slash foreign aid in January 2025 has led to significant cuts in HIV treatments, a spike in pregnancies and a return to discrimination.Chisomo Nkwanga, an HIV-positive man who lives in the northern town of Mzuzu, told AFP that the end of US-funded specialised care was like a death sentence.After his normal provider of life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART) vanished due to budget cuts, he turned to a public hospital.”The healthcare worker shouted at me in front of others,” Nkwanga recalled. “They said, ‘You gay, you are now starting to patronise our hospitals because the whites who supported your evil behaviour have stopped?'””I gave up,” he said, trembling. “I am a living dead.”More than one million of aid-dependent Malawi’s roughly 22 million people live with HIV and the United States previously provided 60 percent of its HIV treatment budget.Globally, researchers estimate that hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths have been caused by the Trump administration’s dismantling of US foreign aid, which has upended humanitarian efforts to fight HIV, malaria and tuberculosis in some of the world’s poorest regions.- Lay offs, panic -In Malawi, the drying up of support from USAID and the flagship US anti-HIV programme, PEPFAR, has left a “system in panic”, said Gift Trapence, executive director of the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP).”The funding cut came on such short notice that we couldn’t prepare or engage existing service providers,” Trapence told AFP.”We had to lay off staff… we closed two drop-in centres and maintained two on skeleton staff,” he said. “We did this because we knew that if we closed completely, we would be closing everything for the LGBTI community.”The Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) non-government organisation, a cornerstone of rural healthcare, has been forced to ground the mobile clinics that served as the only medical link for remote villages.”We had two big grants that were supporting our work, particularly in areas where there were no other service providers,” said executive director Donald Makwakwa.”We are likely to lose out on all the successes that we have registered over the years,” he said.A resident of a village once served by FPAM told AFP there had been an explosion in unplanned pregnancies when the family planning provider stopped work.”I know of nearly 25 girls in my village who got pregnant when FPAM suspended its services here last year,” said Maureen Maseko at a clinic on the brink of collapse.- Progress undone -For over a decade, Malawi’s fight against AIDS relied on “peer navigators” and drop-in centres that supported people with HIV and ensured they followed treatment.With the funding for these services gone, the default rate for people taking the HIV preventative drug PrEP hit 80 percent in districts like Blantyre, according to a report by the CEDEP.”This is a crisis waiting to happen,” the report quoted former district healthcare coordinator Fyness Jere as saying. “When people stop taking PrEP, we increase the chances of new HIV infections… we are undoing a decade of progress in months,” she said.Trapence noted that without specialised support, thousands of patients had simply disappeared from the medical grid.”We lost everything, including the structures that were supporting access… treatment and care,” he said.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday rejected the idea that European governments could aggressively sell American debt to counter Washington’s threats over Greenland, saying such a move would “defy logic”.President Donald Trump said at the weekend that, from February 1, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden would be subject to a 10-percent tariff on all goods sent to the United States until Denmark agrees to cede Greenland. The announcement has drawn angry charges from the US allies who are pondering countermeasures.These could include retaliatory tariffs but also possibly a concerted strategy to offload US Treasury bonds.About a third of traded American government bonds, estimated at a total of some $30 trillion, is held by foreigners, led by Japan.Other major holders of US sovereign bonds include the UK, Belgium, Canada and France.Aggressive selling of bonds would cause long-term interest rates to spike, make the re-financing of the US debt hugely more expensive for Trump’s administration and weigh heavily on corporate financing and the economy as a whole.”Europeans hold roughly $10 trillion in US assets: around $6 trillion in US equities and roughly $4 trillion in Treasuries and other bonds,” observed Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote. “Selling those assets would pull the rug from under US markets.”But asked by reporters at the Davos World Economic Forum whether the US was preparing for such a scenario, Bessent said that it “defies any logic”.Calling the US Treasury market “the best-performing market in the world” and the “most liquid” debt market, he said he expected Europeans to hold on to their exposure, not offload it.”There’s a completely false narrative there,” he said.”I think everyone needs to take a deep breath. Do not listen to the media who are hysterical.”European Union leaders will hold an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday to discuss their response to the Greenland crisis, and Trump said he had agreed to a meeting with “various parties” on the standoff while he is in Davos this week.There were signs, meanwhile, in global markets that a “Sell America” movement was underway, said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, a trading firm.US markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday, but “Treasury yields are rising sharply” in anticipation of Tuesday’s reopening, she said.The dollar fell and “Japan leads a global bond sell-off”, the analyst observed, adding that American equities were also marked lower ahead of Wall Street’s session Tuesday.Concerns have mounted “over the Trump administration’s confrontational stance toward global counterparts, which could potentially dampen appetite for US assets”, with longer-term bonds bearing “the brunt of the decline”, said Patrick Munnelly, a money manager at the Tickmill group.Analysts said global investors were intently focused on Davos, where Trump is expected Wednesday, for fresh insights into the US-Europe standoff. 

US President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat against Europe over Greenland has hit its top economy Germany just as hopes are growing for a modest recovery after years of stagnation.Germany’s government and its export-reliant businesses were blindsided when Trump again wielded the tariffs axe at the weekend — this time sparked by his anger over a geopolitical rather than an economic dispute.”For Germany, these new tariffs would be absolute poison,” ING economist Carsten Brzeski told AFP, adding that the heightened uncertainties “clearly jeopardise the fragile recovery underway”.Germany — long ailing from high energy prices, falling demand in China and stiff competition from the Asian giant, and last year’s US tariffs blitz — achieved just 0.2 percent GDP growth in 2025 after two years of recession.Huge public spending to rebuild Germany’s armed forces and ageing infrastructure have boosted hopes for a stronger rebound this year, and the government has predicted GDP will expand by 1.3 percent in 2026.That was before Trump — angered by pushback against his desire to seize Denmark’s autonomous territory of Greenland — threatened additional tariffs of up to 25 percent on products from eight European countries, including Germany.The news — which drove down stocks and saw safe-haven assets like gold rise — rattled German companies and provoked a mix of puzzlement and anger.”Greenland is taking this madness to extremes,” Thorsten Bauer, co-head of laser maker Xiton Photonics, told AFP, expressing a sentiment shared by many business leaders. The Federation of German Industries denounced “an inappropriate and damaging escalation for all parties,” which it said “is putting enormous pressure on transatlantic relations”.And the German Association of Wholesalers, Exporters and Service Providers slammed Trump’s latest threat as “grotesque” and stressed defiantly that “we continue to stand by Denmark: democracy and freedom cannot be wiped out by punitive tariffs”.- ‘Out of the blue’ -Trump’s latest salvo comes after the EU and the United States in July agreed to cap tariffs on most EU exports at 15 percent, with most goods in the other direction being tariff-free.Though some criticised the deal as one-sided, many German businesses cautiously welcomed the deal for the certainty it seemed to bring.”Our members largely kept a cool head during last summer’s tariffs debate and waited patiently. But waiting patiently cannot go on forever,” the German Association of Small and Medium-sized Businesses told AFP. “Donald Trump’s erratic policies are poison for the global economy and free trade -– and they damage trust that has been built up over years in rules-based systems.”The group said new tariffs would particularly hurt German SMEs but nonetheless insisted that “Europe must not allow itself to be blackmailed. If the US does indeed impose tariffs, Europe needs to respond quickly and decisively”.European diplomats have promised a firm response if Trump makes good on his threat and powerful conservative German Member of the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, said final ratification of the July deal was now “on ice”.Some experts have voiced hope that all sides will step back from an escalation of a dispute that would hurt everyone involved, and threaten US-German trade worth over 250 billion euros ($290 billion).US tariffs have already exacted a heavy toll on Germany. From January to November, German exports to the United States fell 9.4 percent from a year earlier and the country’s trade surplus with the world’s biggest economy dropped to its lowest level since 2021, statistics agency Destatis said Tuesday.If implemented and sustained for a long period, the new tariffs “could cost the eurozone economy something between 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent of GDP, with a bigger hit for Germany,” wrote Andrew Kenningham of Capital Economics.”In practice though, we doubt that they will be implemented as advertised. We also think the EU will be cautious in any retaliation in an effort to avoid further escalation.”The new uncertainty comes at a tough time for Germany’s crucial auto sector, which is now bracing for resurgent transatlantic trade tensions it had hoped had been put to bed.Automotive analyst Pal Skirta of Metzler Bank told AFP that Trump’s latest threat is worse news than last year’s.”The Liberation Day tariffs were maybe not very reasonable, but you could justify them,” he said. “With Greenland, it comes out of the blue, you can’t justify it by macroeconomic logic.”