On 5 May, President Trump announced plans to raise tariffs, arguing that current U.S.-China talks are too slow. From 10 May, tariffs on USD200bn of imports from China would increase to 25% (from 10% currently).

On 6 May, Turkey's electoral body ordered Istanbul's local elections to be rerun after a narrow victory by the opposition CHP’s candidate in March, thus overturning a rare defeat for President Erdogan

Seasonally adjusted industrial production rose by +0.5% in March compared with the previous month.

In March, French exports still grew the way they grew, putting Q1 export gains at +EUR6.3bn (compared to Q1 2018), with aeronautics (+2.1bn), chemicals (+1.7bn) and electronics (+0.7bn) being the Top3 growth sectors.

The April employment report was quite strong as the economy added +263k jobs, easily beating expectations of +180k.

Last week, the Czech National Bank (CNB; the central bank) raised its key policy interest rate by 25bp to 2.0%, a move that contrasts with the stance of many other central banks which recently have halted tightening or even turned more expansionary against the backdrop of moderating global growth

After the election, the South African government will have to fix 3 Depletions that hurt growth in the past: power, jobs and financing.

Latest figures were a bit of a mixed bag. On trade, while exports decreased (-2.7% y/y in April after +14.2% in March) imports made their comeback (+4% y/y) after four months of contraction.