It took Liz Truss 10 days after the mini-Budget to accept that her economic policy could not survive its contact with reality. It may take Donald Trump a little longer because the US economy is so powerful, and he may be better at pretending that he hasn’t reversed course, but he too will have to accept that he cannot beat the markets.
It was significant that his declaration of a global trade war on Wednesday was made at 5pm Eastern Time, after the markets had closed. The only reason for the timing was that someone in the White House had realised that, if the speech had been delivered during the day, the TV channels could have run a ticker along the bottom of the screen with live prices on Wall Street turning red.
