Commuters in Abidjan, one of West Africa’s largest cities, joke that it is impossible to run two errands a day because of traffic. A new overpass on the way to the airport could make their journeys smoother. About 120,000 vehicles will move through it every day, according to the Ivorian agency overseeing its construction.

For years, as the work continued, a billboard told Ivorians who made it possible: “Financed by the American people.” But they are not so sure of that promise anymore. The billboard was removed earlier this year because President Trump has gutted U.S. foreign aid, leaving large infrastructure projects financed by the United States facing an uncertain future.

Now, construction workers in Abidjan are rushing to complete the overpass before the Trump administration turns off the funding. It is a sign of how African investors and government leaders, as well as drivers, are adapting to the new U.S. strategy on the continent.

The United States is not so much in a financing mood. It wants deals.

“Trade, not aid, is now the pillar of our policy in Africa,” Troy Fitrell, the State Department’s top Africa official, said in a speech last week at a business summit in Abidjan. Minutes after he finished speaking, U.S. and Ivorian companies signed more than half a dozen deals, including to supply drones for agriculture and mining, and scanning systems for border monitoring.

Mr. Trump has broken with the terms that defined decades of U.S. involvement in Africa: He has shrunk the U.S. Agency for International Development, imposed tariffs that threaten a free-trade mechanism with dozens of African countries, and rolled back anti-corruption standards for American companies doing business with foreign partners.

The Trump administration has also begun dismantling a little-known agency established by Congress in 2004 that finances the overpass in Ivory Coast and dozens of large infrastructure projects in a short list of countries. These include projects to expand electricity grids, build roads or increase women’s employment in places such as Indonesia, Nepal and Senegal.

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European Union defense and foreign ministers approved a new package of sanctions on Russia on Tuesday, targeting covert oil exports, days after the top E.U. official announced plans for a further set of even tougher restrictions.

The point is to intensify Russia’s economic pain — and by doing so, to prod President Vladimir V. Putin toward peace talks to end the war in Ukraine. The push comes as questions mount about how the United States will approach future sanctions.

After a call between President Trump and Mr. Putin on Monday, the White House backed off its demand that Russia declare an immediate cease-fire. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said at a news conference that it was unclear whether the United States would join with Europe in stepping up sanctions.

E.U. nations have imposed extensive sanctions on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The ones they approved on Tuesday are the 17th set. These take aim at Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — old tanker ships that Moscow uses to covertly transport and sell its oil around the world.

Officials are already discussing an 18th package. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U. executive arm, said last week that officials could go after gas pipelines, hit banks and push to further crimp Russia’s global energy sales.

“It takes two to want peace, and it takes only one to want war,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said on Tuesday. “In order to make Russia want peace, also, we need to put more pressure on Russia.”

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President Trump’s recent trip to the Persian Gulf was notable for the ways that American foreign policy overlapped with his family’s business interests. But another powerful White House figure also cut lucrative deals in the region last week: Elon Musk.

Tagging along on Mr. Trump’s state visit to Saudi Arabia last week, Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, announced that his company SpaceX had secured approval to provide its Starlink satellite internet services to companies there.

As Mr. Trump carried on to Abu Dhabi, where the financial district’s towers were illuminated to resemble American flags, Mr. Musk’s company Neuralink announced a deal. That company, which makes implantable brain chips, said it would conduct a clinical trial in Abu Dhabi with the local health ministry.

The terms of both deals were not disclosed. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was in talks over providing internet service to Emirates Airlines, which is owned by the government.

Mr. Musk occupies a unique role, even for an administration that has shattered norms around governance and private deal-making. He has attended cabinet meetings and wields incredible power to cut programs across the government — all while operating companies that profit from federal spending and foreign contracts.

He and his family have riches at stake in the Persian Gulf, a region whose autocratic monarchies have tried to cultivate closer ties to the West. In doing so, its leaders have courted international executives, invested in big-name sports leagues or teams and at times, authorities say, bribed lawmakers and their family members.

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When Pakistan said it had shot down multiple Indian fighter jets earlier this month, ripples from that claim stretched all the way to the South China Sea, to Taiwan.

The Pakistani forces were flying Chinese-made J-10C fighters during the four-day conflict with India, and officials said Chinese missiles had brought down Indian planes.

The J-10 jets, which Chinese media have dubbed the “fighter of national pride,” have often been used in Chinese military exercises to menace Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own. But they had not been battle-tested, leaving open the question of how well they would perform in actual combat.

In China, commentators declared that question now answered.

“Taiwanese experts say the Taiwanese military has no chance against the J-10C,” The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, crowed on Monday.

The Chinese government has not directly confirmed the Pakistani claims, and India has not publicly confirmed losing any aircraft. But on Saturday, China’s state broadcaster declared on social media that J-10C jets had recently “achieved combat results for the first time,” with the post including a hashtag related to the India-Pakistan conflict.

Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the Chinese military, wrote in an op-ed article that the jets’ success would boost Chinese confidence in future territorial disputes over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

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