U.S. job growth stalled in July, with just 73,000 jobs added. Also, employment numbers for May and June were lowered, prompting President Trump to fire the commissioner overseeing the agency that reports unemployment data.

Trump's public frustrations with the economics and statistics agency appear to date back to his 2016 presidential campaign. "Don't believe those phony numbers," then-candidate Trump said in his New Hampshire victory speech during his first campaign for the White House.

That leverage came from the singular importance of the US market to the global economy. Trump’s personal belief in the utility of tariffs – and willingness to let them go into place and then, if necessary, escalate to shut down any retaliatory efforts – only served to enhance that reality.

A seductive idea is settling in that America is winning from all this. The president has, after all, got his biggest trading partners to make deals that are closer to his demands than theirs. Financial markets have shrugged off higher duties,