Being in Washington, DC this week has felt like being on the fringes of an all-consuming—and terrifying—reality TV spectacle: the Trump Tariff Show. Against the made-for-TV backdrop of America’s capital in (somewhat chilly) springtime, my colleagues and I shuttled around to meetings with administration officials, congressmen, diplomats and scholars. We learned about the divisions among Donald Trump’s economic advisers (crudely, the “pause and negotiate” camp led by Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, versus hardliners, such as Peter Navarro). We heard earnest—if unconvincing—attempts by officials to explain the logic of causing the biggest tariff shock in history. We witnessed the bafflement of diplomats and politicians from tariffed countries. We could sense the growing alarm as the markets plunged—and the bewildered relief on Wednesday afternoon after Mr Trump blinked and announced a 90-day pause on his bonkers “reciprocal” tariffs.

It’s been a rollercoaster few days, and as I write this we still have more meetings ahead. But several things are already clear to me. First, this show has only one protagonist who matters: Mr Trump. There is no tariff strategy beyond his whims. Second, although Mr Trump blinked yesterday, don’t think that this Tariff Show is over. America is still engaged in a brutal tit-for-tat trade war with China. (The two countries’ headline tariffs on each other are now 145% and 84% respectively and neither Mr Trump nor Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, wants to lose face by backing down.) America still has a 10% duty on virtually all other countries, by itself a dramatic increase. And while Mr Trump now promises great deals from negotiations with the dozens of countries queuing up to talk to him, he retains his long-held conviction that tariffs are a powerful weapon to ensure manufacturing jobs return to America. The trouble is that if companies are really to be persuaded to reshore manufacturing jobs to America, then America’s tariffs will need to stay high. But if they stay high, what incentive do trading partners have to give huge concessions? Mr Trump’s muddled convictions, and the contradictions they contain, will hang over all the many bilateral negotiations his team is about to start.

That is why, as our cover leader explains, the damage of the past week cannot be easily undone. Yes, markets have recovered from a near meltdown. But Mr Trump has upended the old certainties that underpinned the global economy and introduced extraordinary levels of volatility and confusion. We are, as our cover title says, in the “age of chaos”. That may be exactly what you want in a nail-biting TV show. In the real world, it is a disaster.