"Trade had been put to the side by many market participants," said Andrew Tilton, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Goldman Sachs. "Market pricing assumed there would be some kind of a deal, and no further escalation in tariffs. And meanwhile the growth outlook was actually improving," he told Bloomberg TV.
Trump's threat now "raises the spectre of a significant hit to growth should these tariffs escalate and should the uncertainty associated with that weigh on investment going forward."