Editor's Note: Jameel Ahmad is the chief analyst at Online Trading Brokerage GTC. The article reflects the author's views, and not necessarily those of CGTN.

The US financial markets might be within touching distance of all-time high levels not seen since before the infamous "liberation day" on April 2 when returning US President Donald Trump unleashed trade tariffs on dozens of US trading partners for goods imported into the US. When headlines make their way through the airways that it is making progress regarding ongoing trade negotiations with numerous economies after months of erratic twists and ongoing turns, it has morphed into an endless TV drama that will be long-remembered as Trump Trade Tariffs – it does appear that there are risks that talks between the United States and the European Union are at an impasse. Or perhaps a further wait for extended episodes to a TV drama that very few in the global economy enjoy watching.

This is particularly true for businesses in the European Union that export goods to the US where the US is the largest customer of EU products, which make up 20 percent of its total exports. Considering the persistent period of underwhelming economic growth that the EU has withstood for most of the last decade, or some would argue, since the origins of the Global Financial Crisis close to two decades ago, few believe that a trade war is a battle that the European Union can realistically win.

With that being said, there have been few winners from the Trump tariff aggression. Even away from the US-EU tensions, tariff aggression is already having a detrimental impact on sentiment for the world economic outlook. In fact, the return to the Whitehouse for Donald Trump and specific attention to the Trump Trade Tariffs has been used as the cause behind the repeated diagnosis of weaker economic growth. For example, it was only days ago that the World Bank downgraded global GDP expectations for 2025, following the road already taken by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperations and Development in recent weeks.

This of course does not suggest that the US economy is a winner from the unconventional tactics used by the Trump Administration. In fact, it is more compelling to suggest that the US might ironically be the biggest loser from the persistent trade uncertainties taking place around the world economy as a result of the Make America Great Again V2.0.

When the IMF revised the world economic growth outlook lower shortly after the "liberation day", the institution stated that the US economy would be hit the most from other advanced economies. Just days ago, the World Bank sang a similar tune when it threatened that the US economy would grow at only half of the pace achieved last year (2.8 percent). Perhaps even more concerning is that in January, the World Bank forecast a 2.3 percent growth for the US this year. The revised suggestion of 1.4 percent suggests that Trump Tariff uncertainty has already done damage to the US economic outlook.

Sentiment has changed towards the US economic outlook and the US dollar as well.

Initially, it was expected that the US dollar would benefit from ongoing financial market distress as a consequence of the tariff turbulence but the number of times that tariffs have been rolled back has suggested that even the Trump Administration is concerned about how the uncertainty is impacting the US economy. This has changed the tune of the music towards investors pricing in weakness in the US currency that has not seen since 2022. The US dollar index is down close to 10 percent over the first half of the year, which would represent the steepest losses for the greenback since the financial crisis.

Nonetheless, with the tune of the music changing in recent months and beating to a drum that it is the US economy rather than the trading partners that it has chosen to impose trade tariffs to suffer the most from the trade tariff aggression, it would not be an understatement to suggest that the US negotiation table is also under pressure heading into more crunch talks with its European Union counterparts.

Even if we receive optimistic trade deal headlines in the coming days as negotiations remain ongoing behind the scenes, this can be considered as somewhat smoke and mirrors as damage to world economic growth prospects has already been felt from the persistent uncertainty and erratic shifts in tariff policy with the return of US President Donald Trump to the Whitehouse.

There is of course some likelihood that the deadline for additional tariffs on EU products into the US of July 9 might be extended, but this might not be well-received from spectators because it can be viewed as simply kicking the can down the road – a can that one would argue has already been kicked enough considering all the extensions and rolling back of tariffs that have already been watched during this TV series that has gone on long enough.