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The biggest impact of the US’s trade war is not economic, but political. While President Donald Trump threatens tariffs, “the rest of the west” is self-consciously choosing to double down on economic globalisation (with the exception of the UK, which is busy isolating itself from the European economy). That poses the question supporters of the liberal world order had hoped would not arise. How much does the global economy need the US? If the worst happens, and the US withdraws from the world trading system, can the rest of the world sustain it between themselves?

World leaders are ever more visibly determined to try. The very welcome EU-Japan free trade agreement creates the world’s largest free trade area, virtually eliminating tariff barriers, and reducing non-tariff ones, for about one-third of the global economy. The political leaders who signed it explicitly presented it as a manifestation of their will to maintain the postwar free trade system. The survival of the Trans-Pacific Partnership after Trump withdrew the US from the new trade bloc, shows that Japan has taken on the mantle of defending a world order on which it was often seen as a free rider.