India, April 10 -- US President Donald Trump has paused his additional reciprocal tariffs on all countries except China, for now. China now faces 125% tariffs and everybody else will face 10% tariffs for the next 90 days, in which period they can hope to strike a trade deal with the US.

The sheer scale of this policy flip-flop, in which the world's largest economy has swung from unleashing a global trade war to eventually launching a bilateral one with China, is unprecedented in modern economic history. When read with the fact that the now paused tariffs were based on US's trade deficits with each country rather than a commodity specific or value chain analysis by the US only underlines the madness in the method being followed by the Tru...