Most Americans are probably unaware that it is just passed a year since their president, Donald Trump, started his trade war with China. It is even debatable if most voters will recall what it was all about. But they, along with other economies, including ours, should be counting the costs.

In keeping with Trump’s world view of everything being a zero-sum game — if you win, I lose — he started the conflict to ostensibly close the US’s massive trade deficit with China, which the Guardian newspaper put at $419.5bn (R6.5-trillion) in 2018...

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