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The unfocused nature of the American tariffs and the piercing rhetoric from the president and his circle that has accompanied them has unsettled trade experts. And it’s left many wondering: if this keeps escalating, how bad can it get?

American tariffs sparked the global trade war that cratered the world economy in the 1930s and it was an American effort that led to the steady trade liberalization of the last 80 years.

“The U.S. was the creator of the (World Trade Organization) system and the free trade system that we took for granted until now,” said Mary Anne Madeira, an assistant professor of political science at the City University of New York.

“Without our leadership, we could return to that,” she said.

Could new American trade sanctions send the world back to the bad old days? It’s not impossible.

Here are the good, bad and ugly scenarios on the horizon.

The Good

To economists and experts on international trade, there aren’t a lot of genuinely good scenarios here, but something along the lines of a “least worst” outcome does exist.

“The best case scenario would be that growth slows down, the Trump administration recognizes what’s happening and reverses the policies,” said Madeira.

That’s exactly what happened to Bush in 2002 when he brought in his own steel tariffs. The move was a short-lived boon for the American steel industry, creating about 3,500 new jobs. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, each job cost consumers about $400,000 in the form of higher prices and the meagre job gains were counterbalanced by about 200,000 job losses in other industries.