What would you think if an arsonist set fire to your house, waited until the flames were causing major damage, and then rushed in and put (most of) the fire out? Would you thank the arsonist for saving your house, or would you be angry with him for starting the fire in the first place? Would you look around your home, now drenched in water and with some spots still smoldering and burning, and be thankful? Probably not.

This is where we now find ourselves in Donald Trump's self-inflicted trade war with China. The day after April Fool's Day, Trump made his "Liberation Day" announcement, where he slapped massive tariffs on almost every country in the world (except Russia, for some reason). Within a week, he pulled back to a blanket 10 percent worldwide tariff and "paused" the higher rates for individual countries for 90 days, because the markets had reacted so drastically to his scheme. We're approaching the halfway mark of that 90-day period, and only one "kinda/sorta" trade deal has been announced, with Britain (it's not a fully-fleshed-out trade deal at all, merely a sort of aspirational blueprint).

China wasn't a part of this pause, however. Trump amped up the tariff on China to a breathtaking 145 percent, while China retaliated with its own 125 percent tariff on U.S. goods. This has had the same effect as a trade embargo, since nobody wants to buy goods with that steep an additional tax on them. The halt in trade is working its way down the supply chain to the U.S., as companies here cancel orders and container ships stop carrying goods to U.S. ports. Prices have risen and shortages are appearing for American consumers.

Something had to give. So this weekend, Trump blinked. China, all along, has been demanding that the U.S. remove the new tariffs before any dialog or negotiations could even begin between the two countries. This is exactly what Trump agreed to this weekend -- after swearing for weeks that he would never do such a thing. There is no "deal" with China at all, but now the two countries will sit down and try to work one out in the next 90 days. China got what it wanted, in other words, and the U.S. got nothing.

Trump left a 30 percent tariff in place, which is still very high. All goods from China will now have a tax of roughly one-third their value levied on them. But this is just "very high" as opposed to "insanely, suicidally high," so it counts as progress. China will keep a 10 percent tariff on U.S. goods for the time being.

You may be thinking that none of this makes much sense, and you'd be right about that. The entire disruption of the world's economy has been performative all along -- Trump wanted to be seen as the biggest bully in the world, and he did achieve that much. But we could have gotten to exactly the same point without all the disruption and chaos, which would have been a much easier route to take.

If Trump had announced, the day after April Fool's Day, that he was instituting a worldwide 10 percent tariff, and that every country had 90 days to cut new deals with the U.S. or they would face crippling additional tariffs (calculated by a bizarre metric that Trump loves, but which makes no economic sense whatsoever), then exactly the same thing would have happened. Countries would have begun negotiations with the U.S. and worked to figure out exactly what would assuage Trump enough to scrap the idea of slapping massive tariffs on their goods. China would have entered into negotiations as well, and the American (and world) economy would have avoided the past month of absolute chaos. We'd be exactly where we are now, but without all the disruptions in the economy that have happened in the past month.

It's still unclear, in all of this, exactly what Trump is trying to accomplish. Will the 10 percent worldwide tariff just be a new baseline for world trade? It certainly seems that way, since the only "deal" announced so far (with Britain) still leaves the 10 percent rate in place. Trump backed off his insane tariffs on China this weekend, but he left an additional 10 percent in place (on top of a 20 percent tariff that predated "Liberation Day").

Trump has sent conflicting messages about the goal of this trade war from the very start. At times, he seems like he is in love with the concept of high tariffs, which (according to him) would bring in so much money (paid for as a tax by U.S. consumers) that he could eliminate income taxes for anyone making less than $200,000 (spoiler alert: this is not realistic and will not happen). These new taxes would also (according to him) make corporations change their strategy and build factories here at home rather than abroad. But then Trump contradicts this whole story by admitting that the high tariffs are nothing more than leverage to force other countries to cut better trade deals with the U.S. If they're just leverage to be bargained away, then none of the rest of it will ever happen (the money coming in or the factories coming home).

A baseline tariff of 10 percent on the world (or 30 percent, on China) would raise prices for American consumers, but they wouldn't shoot through the roof. The tax would be a lot more than Americans paid previously (the rate on Britain will essentially triple the taxes previously paid by Americans for British goods), but it wouldn't completely price foreign producers out of the American market.

It would, however, be a drag on the American economy. It will probably lead to higher inflation, although precisely how much higher is not known yet. It will probably lead to higher prices on all sorts of things -- even stuff made here in America that uses foreign raw materials (like a cup of coffee, for instance).

The markets reacted favorably to the announcement of Trump backing down on the insanely-high China tariff. A sense of stability seems to be emerging from the chaos. American businesses can price in a 10 percent worldwide tariff rate (30 percent on China) and make future plans accordingly. If Trump uses the 10 percent rate as a baseline for the rest of his term, then plans can be made and prices adjusted to take the new factor in. What the markets really hate is uncertainty -- not knowing from day to day or week to week what Trump is going to do next to upset the apple cart of world trade. This is what Trump has finally realized, it appears -- that there are bad consequences to his erratic behavior that will have real-world impacts on the American economy, and the only way to avoid it is to back down in advance.

We'll see how this all plays out. As we approach first the 90-day deadline with the rest of the world and then (a month later) the 90-day deadline with China, what trade deals will be announced? Will Trump make good on his threat to hike the tariffs on any country without a deal by that point, or will he merely extend the "pause" period? Time will tell.

One thing that probably won't happen is Trump "solving" a "problem" that doesn't really exist in the first place. Trump measures everything to do with trade on the metric of the trade gap with other countries. He wants to see it disappear -- so that we sell other countries exactly as much as they sell us. But this is probably impossible for many countries, so the only way to "solve" it would be for all trade to halt with them (in which case, zero would equal zero, so there would be no trade gap).

While I am certainly relieved to see Trump back down with China, I can't give him any sort of credit for doing so. If he hadn't been so petulant and irrational in the first place, then we could have been at exactly the point we are now a month ago. All the economic chaos never would have happened -- or it would have done so at a much lower intensity.

We won't be able to see what the impacts of all of this will be for months to come. The threat of the tariffs caused many large U.S. corporations to massively stock up on goods right before the tariffs were announced, which caused a big spike in a lot of economic indicators. That spike may be followed by a huge drop downwards in April, as those same corporations just stopped buying anything from China. Eventually, this rollercoaster will (assumably) level off to a new normal, and we'll be able to see what the long-term impacts of it all will truly be. But again, this won't become clear for months to come. And we may even be at the start of another big spike, since corporations have no guarantee that a deal will be reached in that 90-day period, so they may go back to stocking up again in anticipation of things getting worse in the near future.

Trump lit a huge fire in the world's economy. It did some major damage. This weekend, he rushed in to put out the fire that he personally started. He does not deserve praise for doing so, since he caused the problem in the first place. The only thing to be thankful for in all of this is that Trump backed down now, rather than allowing things to get much, much worse. He finally realized that China was not some dinky little country he could push around. China stood up to Trump and forced him to the bargaining table. If this hadn't happened for another month or more, the American economy would have taken a much bigger hit. So that's the only thing to be thankful for -- that Trump blinked now rather than later.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant