Global stock markets have continued to rise today after Donald Trump’s shock announcement that he was pausing reciprocal tariffs for 90 days on all countries except China, whose levy instead increased to 125%. The 10% blanket tariff on most worldwide imports remains in place. The FTSE 100 is up by more than 6% today, while the S&P 500 rose 9.5% yesterday, the index’s best day since 2008. Keir Starmer will this afternoon announce measures to put more “bobbies on the beat”. Police officers will patrol busy areas at peak times, with every neighbourhood in England and Wales assigned a named and contactable officer. The 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games will feature a host of new events, including cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash. Mixed-sex events in artistic gymnastics and golf, as well as a mixed 4x100 relay race, have also been added to the line-up.

China is more robust than Trump thinks

So after all that, says The Wall Street Journal, Trump blinked first. The US president always says trade wars are “easy to win”, but investors think otherwise and last night he clearly decided that “maybe investors are right”. The bond market rout was particularly worrying, because investors usually flock to the safety of US Treasuries during stock market crashes. The fact that they didn’t this time was a clear signal of a “loss of confidence in Washington”. It has long been a maxim that you should never bet against America, and investors usually don’t. It’s a sign of the magnitude of Trump’s tariff folly that he is “goading them into doing so”.

The big question now is whether Trump can prevail in a drawn-out trade war with China, says David Fickling in Bloomberg. Don’t count on it. Beijing has spent decades war-proofing its economy against exactly this sort of scenario. Just look at the main items the two countries trade with each other. America’s main imports from China are consumer products you’d find in Walmart or on Amazon: smartphones, computers, toys and so on. Slap big tariffs on these, as Trump has done, and ordinary Americans “are going to notice pretty soon”. Most of China’s imports from the US, by contrast, are so-called “intermediate goods” for its manufacturing industry – crude oil, silicon chips, jet engines – that ordinary consumers aren’t exposed to. What’s more, the US is a “relatively minor supplier” to China for almost all these items, meaning Beijing should be able to find alternative sources relatively easily. China’s economy has plenty of problems right now. “But international commerce isn’t one of them.”