The Week Ahead

Five of the best known companies in technology will report their earnings this week, including Twitter, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Two of the tech giants that will share their financial results have been under political assault, but for very different reasons. Facebook has come under scrutiny by Congress and regulators for its data practices and role in the spread of misinformation, while Amazon has become a punching bag for President Donald Trump, who has attacked it for not collecting enough taxes and its relationship with the U.S. Postal Service. It’s not clear whether the financial results of either company were affected, but the attacks have nonetheless spooked investors in the past.

— NICK WINGFIELD

The researcher at the center of the Cambridge Analytica scandal will testify on Tuesday before a British panel investigating fake news and the use of social media in the weeks before the country voted to leave the European Union. The University of Cambridge researcher, Alexander Kogan, has been accused of improperly gathering personal data on millions of Facebook’s users and sharing the information with the voter-targeting firm Cambridge Analytica. On Thursday, the same panel, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, will hear from Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer. Schroepfer can expect to hear about the frustration of committee members who have wanted Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to testify rather than lower-ranking executives. The committee has little legislative authority, but is working on a much-anticipated report that aims to shed light on the ways that political campaigns have manipulated social media to win over voters.

— ADAM SATARIANO

President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife, Brigitte, will arrive in Washington early this week for a state visit, and they will be followed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany on Friday. Their discussions with President Donald Trump are likely to center on global security concerns but also on his administration’s aggressive trade agenda, as an important trade deadline looms. On May 1, the exemptions that the United States granted several countries from steel and aluminum tariffs are set to expire, meaning the European Union and other close allies would to pay a steep premium to send metal into the United States. The Trump administration is hoping to use the tariffs as leverage in a trade negotiation, but European leaders have said they will not be bullied into concessions.

— ANA SWANSON

The three Detroit automakers all report first-quarter earnings this week, and most of the attention will focus on struggling Ford Motor Co., which replaced its chief executive a year ago. Ford brought in Jim Hackett last May to reinvigorate earnings, cut costs and sharpen its strategy, but after 11 months on the job he has offered few specifics on a turnaround plan. At least some details on cost-cutting are expected when Ford reports on Wednesday. General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles both present their results Thursday, and are expected to show solid performances, thanks to sales of high-margin trucks and sport-utility vehicles.

— NEAL E. BOUDETTE

Have signs of a slowdown in Europe pushed back the European Central Bank’s timetable for ending its emergency stimulus measures? That will most likely be the chief question when Mario Draghi, the central bank’s president, holds a news conference Thursday after a meeting of the bank’s Governing Council. The ECB is not expected to make any changes to its monetary policy at the meeting. But it will probably discuss whether a downturn in some economic indicators signals a slowdown or is just the result of one-time factors, including an especially brutal flu season that kept many workers off the job.

— JACK EWING

Christian Sewing, the new chief executive of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, will take part in its first-quarter earnings report Thursday. Sewing (pronounced “saving”), who was named to replace John Cryan this month amid chronic losses at the bank, will face investors and analysts in an early morning conference call. They will most likely interrogate Sewing about the bank’s strategy, which some investors complain is amorphous and unconvincing.

— JACK EWING

The Commerce Department will release its initial estimate for economic growth for the first quarter of 2018 on Friday morning. Many analysts have recently revised their forecasts, lowering their estimates of how much the nation’s output increased on an annualized basis in January, February and March. The consensus is now 2 percent. Wall Street has cited slowdowns in residential investment and consumption along with the continuing trade deficit as the reason for the weakened outlook.

Still, while President Donald Trump’s combative and varying statements on trade and tariffs this year have created uncertainty and anxiety, economists remain optimistic that growth will pick up this year. During the last quarter of 2017, the economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.9 percent, adjusted for inflation.

— PATRICIA COHEN

President Donald Trump will be a no-show at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday, making this the second straight year he has skipped out on the annual black-tie gathering of politicians and journalists. The last absentee president was Ronald Reagan in 1981 — and he’d just survived an assassination attempt. (Reagan called in from the hospital anyway.) Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will attend in his stead. See if she can keep a straight face during the comedy portion of the evening, which this year will include Michelle Wolf, a stand-up comic and “Daily Show” veteran whose Netflix series, “The Break,” starts this year.

— MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM