Week ahead: Trade, Twitter, Baby Trump Balloon

Dirhams & Dollars

Dubai: In the end, the trade war began with a whimper, not a bang. Long in the making, the war of words between the US and China has officially turned in to something resembling an actual war, with both nations slapping billions of dollars of trade tariffs on one another. China, over the weekend, called it the biggest trade war ever. US President Donald Trump, previously, has said that trade wars are easy to win. The markets and the broader global economy will be watching closely to see how the situation unfolds in the weeks ahead. Elsewhere, reports have emerged that Twitter has been deleting as many as one million fake users and bots from its platform every day for the past two months. While some analysts have questioned what impact this will have on the social media network’s usage metrics, others have been quick to point out this is a positive step towards cleaning Twitter up. We discuss. And lastly, with Trump set to arrive in London on Saturday, can the UK withstand the controversial president’s first state visit, on the same day as the Fifa World Cup final, which England may very well be playing in? We’ll find out.