This will be a week that is light on data but heavy on politics. The problem for all of us is that the noise coming out of the US administration drowns out signals as to what is really important and what is not. Three of the top five things to look for directly relate to Donald Trump.

In politics the top line has been the botched policy on immigration and in constitutional terms it is massively important. But while it has upset US business leaders, its economic impact is limited, at least in the short term. More important will be what happens on corporate taxation, banking regulation, and fiscal policy. It is hard to know the sequence of any announcements, for in the great helter-skelter of executive orders anything could happen. But the most important single thing will be what happens to the idea of a tax on imports by companies in exchange for a cut in corporation tax.

This is not a presidential idea, for it comes out of the Republicans in Congress and as far as we know the President is opposed. But it does have legs in the legislature. The plan would be for companies to pay 20 per cent on the cost of their imports, offset by the receipts from exports. Because the US imports more goods than it exports this would bring in extra revenue and that would be used to cut corporation tax from 35 per cent to 20 per cent. Unsurprisingly, exporting companies support the idea, while importers are opposed. It would, if enacted, be very damaging to international trade more generally. So what does the President think?

The second area is about the repeal of Dodd-Frank. This was the banking legislation brought in to stop any repeat of the 2008 banking crash. Bank shares shot up at the end of last week on this news, helping push the Dow back above 20,000. Repeal in its entirety could be disastrous, and there is one particular element – separation of banks trading on their own account from the deposit-holding side of their operations – that really has to stay. But other parts of the legislation, particularly those that make it harder for small institutions to compete with the giants, could usefully be reformed. As so often with regulation, the detail is what matters.

Trump: We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank

Third, look at fiscal policy and in particular any signs that the President is fulfilling his promise to rebuild American infrastructure. Whatever view you take of Donald Trump’s initiatives, this one – that governments should use this period of historically low interest rates to borrow to finance big capital projects must make sense. If the US really does set in train a series of big projects, expect pressure to build on other governments including our own to do likewise.

The other two areas of interesting movement are on this side of the Atlantic. One is here in the UK, where the question is sharpening as to what happens to UK nuclear power. Among the many problems there are two new or newish ones. Last week it emerged that Toshiba, which has a 60 per cent stake in the planned NuGen nuclear project in Cumbria, plans to withdraw from its lead role. If this is confirmed it will almost certainly wipe out the project. Separately there is a story running on Bloomberg that the French president will have to sell state assets to rescue its nuclear industry after EDF was weakened by falling European power prices and Areva lost billions on a long-delayed project in Finland. The point as far as the UK is concerned is that EDF is the key builder of Hinkley Point C, and its financial ability to carry through the deal is in question. Last week’s Brexit bill also confirmed that the UK would leave Euratom, which regulates European safety and other standards. This may further delay the project.