Trump threatens Google over claimed political bias

US President Donald Trump has directed his ire towards Silicon Valley once more, this time warning Google about meddling in the 2020 Presidential election.

As ever Trump used Twitter to fire his latest broadside at the tech sector, once more focusing on his pet topic of political bias (largely against him) facilitated by the big internet platforms. In a series of tweets Trump made reference to a whistle-blower at Google, who alleged anti-conservative bias within the company.

If Trump had more proof of these allegations than one or two whistle-blowers he would presumably be doing more than sending menacing tweets, but this seems to indicate that he’s actively looking for it. Much of the media, even the usually neutral and objective Reuters, has chosen to characterise Trumps allegation as being ‘without evidence’, but surely the public testimony of a Google employee, while not necessarily outright proof, is certainly evidence.

While we’re on Trump’s Twitter account, he also recently accused China of currency manipulation, following the fall of the value of the Yuan to historical lows. One of the core gripes with China as a global trading partner is that it devalues the Yuan in order to help its exporters and Trump’s tweets coincide with the US Department of the Treasury officially designating China as a currency manipulator.

General commentary of this move characterises it as a new front in the trade war between the US and China and is likely to lead to some kind of tit-for-tat retaliation. All this currency aggro is considered to be the main cause of a sharp global stock market decline in the past week, as investors are understandably skittish as they wait for further developments.