"Baby, it's cold outside"

As Mr Dylan said, there's a hard rain gonna fall:

The United States and its traditional allies are on the brink of a full-scale trade war after European and Canadian leaders reacted swiftly and angrily to Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium producers.

The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised immediate retaliation after the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said EU companies would face a 25% duty on steel and a 10% duty on aluminium from midnight on Thursday.

Europe, along with Canada and Mexico, had been granted a temporary reprieve from the tariffs after they were unveiled by Donald Trump two months ago.

However, Ross sent shudders through global financial markets when he said insufficient progress had been made in talks with three of the US’s traditional allies to reduce America’s trade deficit and that the waiver was being lifted.

Call me timorous if you must but, in an economic world dominated by the trading blocs of the unholy trinity of the US, China and the EU, now would not appear to be the time for little UK to be setting off on its own on the threadbare ship of Brexit into the stormy sea of international trade.