Trump has made the world cross the economic rubicon – an act we will all regret

This weekend is the moment the world crossed the economic rubicon. Until now the open, trade-friendly system built and expanded after the second world war, the midwife of unprecedented global growth and peace, still held - if only just.

- Will Hutton

It may have been riven with imperfections and compromised by great power politics, but it nonetheless leaned in to openness and the principle that there are common global interests.

No more. It has been killed stone dead by President Trump.

On 1 August the US unilaterally imposed tariffs on all goods imported into the US from a further 90 trading partners at the highest average rate for 80 years. It is an economic Pearl Harbour - one of the singularly most hostile unilateral economic acts ever perpetrated. But there has been no resistance. Only China had the heft to be the exception, daring to fight tariff fire with fire, so winning a fragile pause in the tariff wars and, potentially, a partial reprieve.

The rest of the world has been bullied into negotiations that violate the great trade treaties that they had signed up to in good faith, but which Trump chose to shred. More extraordinarily, they have even kissed the hand that is throttling them. Japan has created a half-trillion-dollar fund to invest in key US industries to be identified and managed by Trump, with the US to be accorded 90% of the profits. Similarly, South Korea will buy $350bn of US goods and will give Trump $100bn to invest as he directs. The EU has not gone quite this far; nonetheless, it says it intends to buy $750bn of US fossil fuels and invest $600bn into the US. In return, Trump has halved his proposed tariffs from 30 to 15%.