Donald Trump’s trade war is just one battle in a clash of values between the US and China. Thankfully for investors, Trump has linked stock market gains to his own performance. And he appears to be getting increasingly worried that, if an agreement isn’t reached soon, equity markets will tank. Of course, the civilizational clash will continue, but this “trade war” stage is doing too much damage on both sides of the divide. Evidence emerged this week that US consumers are literally paying for the policy – with those in Trump-voting areas the hardest hit. So, a “win” should be declared by both sides over the next few weeks. However, this new cold war is far from over.

Two studies were released this week on the trade war’s impact on the US economy. Both make grim reading for the White House – and it is clear that tariffs have been a failure on many fronts. One paper, by economists from the New York Fed, Princeton and Columbia University, found foreign exporters haven’t moderated the impact of the tariffs by cutting prices.

This means the entire cost of the tariffs fell on domestic US consumers and importers. It also found that US producers responded to reduced import competition by raising their own prices, further hitting Americans’ pockets. The US domestic price of non-tariffed items was basically flat, but price rises in the US on tariffed goods rose between 10pc and 30pc. US exporters were also hurt by retaliatory tariffs, which were placed on about $121bn (£92bn) of US exports. The authors calculated that by the end of 2018, the cost of lost exports from the US was running at $2.4bn a month.