Trump blinked, but the global economy will never be the same
www.axios.com

... There is now sand -- a lot of it -- in the gears of global commerce, and it won't be going away in the foreseeable future.

Why it matters: President Trump may have backed down on some of the most extreme -- and hardest to justify -- trade barriers he announced a week earlier. But the tariffs that remain in place still make for a more fractured global economy, albeit with slightly different fractures.

- - - Instead of waging an all-out trade war with practically all U.S. trading partners, all at once, the new policy alignment amounts to an escalated trade war with China amid ongoing skirmishes with the rest of the world.

- - - The era of frictionless global trade is over.

State of play: It's hard to overstate how much the escalation in U.S. trade policy over the last two months -- and especially the last eight days -- dwarfs anything in living memory.

- - - Even after Trump's retreat Wednesday, he is imposing a minimum 10% tariff on pretty much all goods from all countries. The last time the average tariff rate was that high was 1943. ...