Friday Briefing: What Trump's first trade war can tell us about his second

Making good on campaign threat

Seeing ‘Donald Trump’, ‘tariffs’, and a ‘China trade war’ in headlines this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’d gone back in time.

But no, this isn't the 2010s, I'm not wearing jeans with a hole at the knee, rather, this is the same US president making good on one of his 2024 campaign threats. Last Saturday (1 February), Trump launched a new global trade conflict, initially imposing 25% levies on imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tax on Chinese goods. News of the tariffs rattled markets, with the S&P 500 still not yet back to its Friday (31 January) highs, however, hysteria has subsided over the past few days as news progressed that Canada and Mexico reached a deal with Trump to defer tariffs by another m...