This may be crunch week for U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the global trading order, with a self-imposed July 9 deadline to reach deals with hundreds of countries expiring on Wednesday. That is, unless the new deadline is actually Aug. 1, as several administration officials suggested over the weekend. 

Should the deadline pass with no new developments, it would potentially mean a return to the sky-high tariffs that Trump announced in early April before backing off a week later after U.S. stock and bond markets had an apoplexy. If the deadline is indeed extended, it could mean yet another month of trade purgatory. 

This may be crunch week for U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the global trading order, with a self-imposed July 9 deadline to reach deals with hundreds of countries expiring on Wednesday. That is, unless the new deadline is actually Aug. 1, as several administration officials suggested over the weekend. 

Should the deadline pass with no new developments, it would potentially mean a return to the sky-high tariffs that Trump announced in early April before backing off a week later after U.S. stock and bond markets had an apoplexy. If the deadline is indeed extended, it could mean yet another month of trade purgatory. 

And some trade shocks have already started: On Monday, Trump said he would levy tariffs of 25 percent on Japan and South Korea, two of the United States’ biggest trading partners in Asia and the bulwarks of the U.S. alliance system in that region. Trump made clear his transactional approach to trade and security in the closing of his letter to South Korean President Lee Jae-myung: “These Tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country,” Trump wrote. The U.S. president sent additional letters to other countries threatening high tariff rates, and he is poised to formalize the delay to August for tariffs to kick in through an executive order.

Yet plenty of unanswered questions remain about Trump’s trade and tariff policy, adding uncertainty to a U.S. economy that is already seeing businesses struggle to plan investments or map supply chain strategies as well as consumers putting off spending. 

And the looming uncertainty affects more than just Washington’s outlook, because U.S. trade policy affects almost the entire global economy. Oxford Economics said on Monday that the return of some degree of U.S. tariffs and other trade-distorting measures could mean “an unusually long contraction in world trade” into next year.

Here’s what we still don’t know just ahead of what is still officially the deadline for the return of what Trump has called his “

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