On paper Israel and China are unlikely close trading partners. China, the world’s second-largest country, is the biggest exporter on the planet. While Israel, a tiny strip of land in the Middle East, is only in 45th place on the global exporting league table. And importantly – Israel has always been a steadfast ally of the US. So given the current trading spat between the US and China, you would expect Israel to be firmly on the American side.

Yet what many people don’t know is that Chinese investment in Israel is continuing to boom, at the same time as a growing number of Israeli firms are entering the Chinese marketplace. So while President Trump is slapping tariffs on Chinese exports and talking tough, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is happily encouraging his country’s firms to accept Chinese investments, as the figures show.

In 2016 China’s direct investment in Israel almost tripled to $16 billion (£12 billion), according to a report in the South China Morning Post newspaper. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post predicts that China will overtake the US as the number one source of overseas investment in Israel. “The Pentagon is increasingly worried that artificial intelligence capabilities acquired by Chinese firms through civilian investments or licensing deals could find their way into a new generation of Chinese weapons that would threaten American troops and American allies.”

“The Pentagon is also worried that Israel could become a back door through which China could acquire capabilities that it could not get in the US due to regulatory scrutiny.”

That is unless somehow the International Monetary Fund (IMF) can find a way to mediate an acceptable solution to the two parties.  At the heart of present US-German trade frictions is Germany’s massive external current account surplus. At almost $300 billion, Germany has the world’s largest such surplus. Meanwhile, at almost 8 percent of GDP, Germany’s current account surplus is a large multiple of China’s sub-2 percent-of-GDP surplus.

Given President Trump’s seeming antipathy to international organizations and given Germany’s moral conviction of the correctness of its pursuit of budget balance, I am not holding out much hope that this will happen. Instead I am bracing myself for the US and Germany to sleepwalk their way to a trade war.

Haley then outlined how much Arab and Islamic countries were donating to the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. In 2017, Haley said, “Iran’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Algeria’s contribution to UNRWA was zero. Tunisia’s contribution to UNRWA was zero.” “Last year, while Algeria was providing nothing to UNRWA, and Turkey was providing $6.7 million, the United States gave $364 million,” Haley continued. “That’s ten times the combined amounts from every country I just named.”

And the lip service extended beyond matters of finance, Haley said. “Where are the Arab countries when it comes to encouraging reconciliation between Palestinian factions, which is essential to peace?” she asked. “Where are the Arab countries when it comes to denouncing Hamas terrorism? Where are the Arab countries when it comes to supporting compromises that are necessary for peace?”

Claiming that the “Palestinian leadership has been allowed to live in a false reality for too long because Arab leaders are afraid to tell them the truth,” Haley asserted that the “United States is telling them the truth because we care about the Palestinian people.”

At the same time, a “sweeping Pentagon review” of special ops missions on the continent may result in drastic cuts in the number of commandos operating there. US Africa Command has apparently been asked to consider the impact on counterterrorism operations of cutting the number of Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and other commandos by 25 percent over 18 months and 50 percent over three years.

While media reports have focused on the possibility of imminent reductions, the number of commandos deployed in Africa is nonetheless up 96 percent since 2014 and remains fundamentally unchanged since the deadly 2017 ambush in Niger.

Cavusoglu’s comments raise the specter of yet another clash between the US and Turkey, which is also in the final stages of an arms deal with Russia that could trigger American sanctions. Turkish officials, in both cases, have dismissed the US' threat of sanctions to constrain the choices of other countries.

Turkey has pledged to consummate an agreement to purchase Russian S-400 anti-aircraft defenses, despite strong pushback from NATO allies and US sanctions on the Russian defense industry.

The president criticized the “globalists” who accepted the idea that American manufacturing jobs could be outsourced to Mexico or other countries. “It’s not ok to me. To me, it’s a very bad thing and it’s stopping,” he said. Trump used the event to boast about historic unemployment rates and mark the importance of restoring manufacturing jobs to the United States. He criticized past leaders of the US for outsourcing jobs with bad trade deals.

“That’s not free trade, that’s fools trade, that’s stupid trade,” Trump said. He said he would continue negotiations with China, Mexico, and Canada to reach better trade deals and demand fairness from the World Trade Organization. “We are putting the trade cheaters on notice: no one rips off the United States anymore,” he said.

The president showed off a new green hat that said “Make our Farmers Great Again,” saying that he would continue fighting for American farmers and opening up markets for their products. Trump urged all Americans to buy products made in America and from companies that hired American workers. “Every time a new factory opens, every time jobs are returned to our shores, every time we buy a product made by our own American neighbors, we are renewing the bonds of love and loyalty that link us all together as Americans,” Trump said.

Following talks at the White House, the pair appeared in the famous Rose Garden to announce the “launch a new phase in the relationship between the United States and EU”. Mr Trump said trade between the two sides would now be “more reciprocal”. The US and European Union have been embroiled in a tit-for-tat trade war in recent weeks which began after Mr Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

But following today’s talks, the former reality TV star said the two sides had agreed to “resolve the steel and aluminium tariff issues”. Germany’s trade minister Peter Altmaier welcomed the “breakthrough” deal, tweeting the agreement “can avoid trade war and save millions of jobs! Great for global economy”. Thomas Simons, money market economist at Jefferies & Co, said: “Trade war type headlines have been the biggest driver of market sentiment - both for Treasuries and stocks - for quite a while now. This is the first time we've gotten good news.”

Agricultural production has been absolutely devastated, major lakes, rivers and streams are rapidly becoming bone dry, and wild horses are dropping dead because they don’t have any water to drink.  In addition, we are starting to see enormous dust storms strike major cities such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, and the extremely dry conditions have already made this one of the worst years for wildfires in US history.  What we are facing is not “apocalyptic” quite yet, but it will be soon if the rain doesn’t start falling.

Federal land managers also have begun emergency roundups in desert areas of Utah and Nevada. ‘We’ve never seen it like this,’ said Simone Netherlands, president of the Arizona-based Salt River Wild Horse Management Group. In May, dozens of horses were found dead on the edge of a dried-up watering hole in northeastern Arizona. Without air conditioning, Phoenix would not be a viable city.  During this time of the year the air conditioners run extremely hard, and authorities have issued an “excessive heat warning”…

Over in California, the big concern is whether the power grid will hold up or not. California’s power grid operator on Monday issued an alert to homes and businesses to conserve electricity on Tuesday and Wednesday when a heat wave is expected to blanket the state. In the past, heatwaves have come and gone, but things are different this time.  Unusual heat has been hammering the Southwest for an extended period of time, and nobody knows when it will end. 

But what should deeply alarm those of us living in the United States in particular is the return of Dust Bowl conditions to the Southwest.  Just within the past couple of days, we have seen massive dust storms hit Phoenix and Las Vegas.  Very few of us were alive back in the 1930s, but we have heard about the immense devastation that occurred as much of the Southwest was literally transformed into a desert. Well, now it is happening again.