Trump’s fresh $300bn China tariff threat spooks markets – business live | Business

One of the reasons why the economy has slowed is that business investment is very, very weak. And it’s unusually weak at this stage in an economic expansion, it’s unusually weak given that there’s not spare capacity, and that the financial sector is wide open.

And the reason is because of uncertainty.

They could borrow the money and their balance sheets are good…and part of the uncertainty is that many of these businesses know that they could end up making an investment that turns out to be stranded because the trading relationship fundamentally changes.