Donald Trump’s tariff soap opera has ensured it has been a rollercoaster of a week.

If anyone had thought peak drama had been hit with the US President’s theatrical unveiling of his tariffs on imports to the US from various countries around the world on April 2, the last week has shown this was probably not the case.

That is not to say that Mr Trump’s April 2 announcement of the various tariffs was not dramatic – it most certainly was.

However, the last week has seen not only a fairly spectacular, if perhaps a little predictable, escalation of tensions between the US and China on trade, but also some wild movements on global stock markets.

In the middle of last week, when stock markets were still reeling from the April 2 tariffs announcement and the ramping up of the trade war between the US and China, Mr Trump had some more big news.

Not long after the UK stock market had closed sharply lower on Wednesday, New York’s Dow Jones Industrial Average was sent soaring by Mr Trump’s announcement of a 90-day “pause” on the tariffs. This is not a complete pause in the conventional sense of the word – it just means that those countries hit with general tariffs of more than 10% will see their exports to the US charged at 10% during this period.

The UK was one of the countries fortunate enough, in a manner of speaking, to see........

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