When the world’s two most powerful men shake hands in Beijing, the rest of us feel the tremor. Today’s summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping comes at a moment when the British intelligence community has issued a stark warning: the trade war is about to escalate. But what does this mean for the people on the street?
For the factory worker in Manchester, the coffee shop owner in Bristol, the pensioner in Edinburgh? The human cost of this diplomatic dance is about to become very real. British analysts fear a new wave of tariffs that could hike prices on everything from electronics to steel, squeezing a cost-of-living crisis that is already leaving households gasping.
Yet the cultural shift is equally profound. We are watching the end of the post-war consensus that saw trade as a force for peace. In its place, a new language of economic nationalism, where every deal is a zero-sum game.
The question is not just who wins or loses in Beijing, but how the rest of us adapt to a world where the rules are rewritten by two men in a room, far from the High Streets that will bear the brunt.
