The US-China trade war seems to have subsided – but the sense of calm is misleading

A truce has cooled the trade conflict, but neither country has done anything to limit the outbreak of new hostilities

Donald Trump's trade wars have largely fallen off the headlines. Fears of new tariffs flare up from time to time when the US president goes off the rails - for instance, threatening to end US trade with countries with which it has a deficit unless the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. But the sense that the world's two largest economies are plowing ahead into an overt economic conflagration has taken a back seat to other, more salient fears, about Trump ending American democracy, AI killing us all and stuff like that.

The sense of calm is misleading. Under the radar, the world is marching toward an economic war of potentially epic proportions, one that, history suggests, could well spill over into the real thing.