Donald Trump has finally blinked – but it’s not the stock markets that have forced him to act

Chalk this one up to the bond vigilantes. This is the term used periodically to describe investors who push back against what are perceived to be irresponsible fiscal or monetary policies by selling government bonds, in the process pushing up yields, or implied borrowing costs. Most of the focus on markets in the wake of Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on the rest of the world has, in the last week, been about the calamitous stock market reaction. This was previously something that was assumed to have been taken seriously by Mr Trump. During his first term in the White…