Commentary: The hot air of Trump’s tariffs is approaching a ceiling of cold reality

LONDON: It wasn’t all that long ago that multinational companies and foreign governments were in a permanent state of hypervigilance for another US President Donald Trump outburst on social media threatening a new barrage of tariffs. These days there’s a steady procession of news events the other way. The meeting in October with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which Trump backed down after threatening a massive escalation of tariffs, now looks a lot like an inflection point. Last week, having remained composed in the face of Trumpian invective against the criminal prosecution of his coup-fomenting predecessor, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio…