Donald Trump's tariffs are increasingly clogging up the wheels of a world economy which for decades were greased by predictable and relatively free trade.
Big-name multinationals right down to niche e-commerce players last week cut sales targets, warned of job cuts and reviewed their business plans, while major economies revised down growth prospects amid bleak data read-outs.
While financial markets are betting the U.S. and China will pull back from an all-out trade war and that Trump will cut deals to avert higher tariffs on others, the sheer uncertainty of where this ends has become a major drag factor in itself.