Washington’s aggressive 25% tariff on all imports of foreign-made cars from April 2, the date President Donald Trump has labelled “liberation day”, has challenged its trading partners to respond with equal severity, even though retaliation carries its own cost. Exposure to these levies would be immense for capitals from Ottawa to Tokyo and Brussels to Beijing, since nearly half the number of finished cars in the U.S. are imported, and those assembled domestically contain 60% of parts made overseas. The auto levy has dealt an additional blow to Washington’s three largest trading partners—Canada, Mexico and China—who were, in early March, hit with substantial duties (over accusations of opioid fentanyl flows into the U.S.) that commentators say are among the highest in decades.

In a not-so-oblique reference on Friday to the intensifying trade war, President Xi Jinping of China, the world’s second-largest economy, who has recently cast himself as a strong champion of globalisation and the multilateral order, exhorted influential global business leaders on the perils of building trade barriers, decoupling and disruption of industrial supply chains. Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, which has been gripped by a strong wave of nationalist fervour in reaction to President Trump’s frequent threat of annexation, has vowed a strong response against the........

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