While financial markets are betting the U.S. and China will pull back from an all-out trade war and that Trump will cut deals to avert higher tariffs on others, the sheer uncertainty of where this ends has become a major drag factor in itself.

Reports suggested President Trump's tariffs were increasingly clogging up the world’s economic wheels previously greased by predictable and free trade.

U.S. President Donald Trump wasted no time implementing his agenda as his second Oval Office term commenced. As part of his “Make America Great Again” policies, Trump has shredded the playbooks that have governed international trade and, indeed, the world order for decades.