US President Trump unleashes tariff tornado

Dreaded April 2, when United States President Donald Trump had warned of announcing reciprocal tariffs, had come and brought bad news to many countries in the world, though the day of reckoning has been deferred to April 9 when the April 2 tariffs would go into effect.

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World trade must have felt a whiff of cold breeze but as of now not anything more than that.

Very few countries have turned penitent and promised to bring down their own tariff walls aimed against American imports. Assessment about the probable damage it would cause to countries which have been exporting heavily to the United States, for example China, and even the European Union (EU), are only too ready to hit back with counter-tariffs.

Many Trump-watchers and global economic experts think that the Trump response to the heavily trade-deficit - $1 trillion - American economy is not really a smart one. Apart from the fact that it is more likely to pull global trade into a slump, it will not achieve what Trump wants to achieve that American manufacturing should re-open and make America a manufacturing hub that it was in the last century.