The next few weeks could be fairly pivotal for the U.S. economy, with new monthly economic numbers being released telling us where we are now, while perhaps new tariff numbers will be imposed by the end of the week which may tell us where we are headed with the rest of the world. All of these outcomes hinge mostly on how Donald Trump's big trade war with the rest of the planet continues to play out.

Trump is now actually making some progress on cutting deals with other countries. Or, at the very least, "cutting some vague handshake agreements" with them. As long as Trump gets to brag about a big number while the leaders of the other country tell him how wonderful he is, Trump is happy. The rest of the details are malleable and still in flux, which you'd never know by the rollout of these announcements. Which products will be exempt from the new tariffs? Details to follow. Will other Trump tariffs (like his 50 percent levy on steel and aluminum and his 25 percent tax on foreign cars) still be in place or will they be superseded by the new agreement? Reply hazy, ask again later.

With this week's announcement that a new handshake agreement had been forged between the U.S. and the European Union, Trump now has six such deals in place. We've also reached similar deals with: Japan, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. We have also reached a sort of détente with China for the time being, where both countries have backed off from their sky-high tariffs they had imposed, but not to the point of the status quo ante, while the countries continue talking. Most other countries in the world face a deadline this Friday to also get some sort of handshake agreement in place.

For the six deals in place, the U.S. has imposed tariff rates ranging from 10 percent to 19 percent. Only one country (the U.K.) got that 10 percent rate, while the rest are in the range of 15-19 percent. China, while talks continue, currently has a 30 percent tariff. This all signals to the rest of the world that 10 percent is the best they can possibly hope for, but 15 percent or more is much more likely. They have to weigh this against the threatened tariff rates (which range a lot higher) which are theoretically supposed to begin this Friday.

I say "theoretically," of course, because nobody really knows what is going to happen Friday. Will Trump chicken out again (TACO Friday!) or will he insist on slapping his Draconian tariffs on all the other countries on time? Again, nobody knows.

China, meanwhile, is on a different timeline. They've got until the middle of August to work out some sort of agreement with Trump. Also looming is the prospect of a new and foreshortened timeline with regards to trade with Russia. Russia, initially given a 50-day timeline to end its war of conquest with Ukraine, has now been moved up (on a whim by Trump, apparently) to only 10 days. Which is not a lot of time, obviously. Trump has threatened both a 100 percent tariff on Russia itself as well as a whopping (and trade-halting) 500 percent tariff on any nation that continues to buy Russian oil and gas. This would include countries such as India (which has no handshake agreement in place yet). But again, who really knows if Trump's new timeline will hold, or whether he'll just capriciously move it around again?

Speaking of gas and oil, the E.U. made a rather fantastical promise in their new handshake deal, to massively boost the amount of energy supplies they buy from the U.S. The numbers of this deal are, in a word, unbelievable. The target is so impossibly high that economists simply do not believe it could even be achieved, in other words. This also could be a signal to the rest of the deal-making world: make any kind of promises you feel like, even if they are impossible to actually achieve -- because it makes no difference to Trump!

Trump's trade war is all transactional, since that's how Trump has always seen the rest of the world. If he gets a number he can brag about, he doesn't really care that it will never actually happen, because he'll boast that it already has happened and dare anyone to contradict him. This is par for Trump's course, really. Trump apparently doesn't care about using his trade war for national security purposes either, as evidenced by him suddenly allowing Nvidia to continue shipping advanced A.I. chips to China (which reversed an earlier ban).

As I said, the next few weeks will bring at least a little more clarity to the effects this is all having on the U.S. economy. Friday, the unemployment figures for July will be released. And next week, the monthly inflation figures will also be released. In the midst of all of this, the board of the Federal Reserve will meet and (more likely than not) announce they are not lowering interest rates quite yet.

Up until now, the American economy has gone through some shocks as a result of the trade war. However, most of these shocks have been short-lived, since things are so fluid and change so rapidly. Trump began with monstrous tariffs on everybody on the planet, but then dialed them back within a week after the markets reacted badly. He left in place a baseline tariff of 10 percent, while the deal-making was to happen. He had to extend his original deadline of 90 days when at the end of it he had only managed two agreements, and that extension is going to be up this Friday. The China tariffs soared to 145 percent but then were also dialed back to 30 percent. In the midst of all this, Trump has continued to issue threats, and has also moved to institute tariffs based not on geography but by product (steel, autos, pharmaceuticals, etc.), which are much higher than the country-by-country tariffs. The economy has had to absorb this whole rollercoaster ride, although for the most part the worst threats have (so far) not become reality. And big businesses had anticipated the whole thing and imported as much as they could before it happened, which lessened the shock on the American consumer (as they were able to absorb all the ups-and-downs with warehouses full of pre-tariff goods).

But that clock is running out. Last month's inflation number took a jump upwards, which is why this month's number will be so important. Was it the beginning of an upwards trend, or just a one-month blip? The unemployment number is of lesser importance, but will also signify whether the trade war is starting to have more widespread effects on the economy or not.

If inflation does go up again, it will likely be because all those warehouses full of stuff couldn't last forever. New products had to be ordered and shipped, complete with the new tariff rates. So far, big businesses have been restrained in passing that additional cost on to the consumer, but this also won't last forever. The shareholders are always more important than the consumers, after all.

At least some sort of picture of what things may look like heading forward is beginning to emerge. The 10 percent tariff is non-negotiable and it's looking like 15 percent will be a baseline for most countries. Certain important products will be exempted from the handshake deals, which come as a huge relief to the industries affected (although not every industry will be covered by these exemptions). And 15 percent is historically incredibly steep, but it certainly is better than the 30-50 percent Trump had been threatening. Over time, the tax increase on American importers will slowly be rolled out as price increases to the consumer, which (businesses hope) they won't notice too much.

What happens Friday is going to be key to all of this. If Trump doesn't back down, then we may see a (smaller) repeat of what happened when Trump initially imposed the worldwide tariffs -- the bond market may freak out. Such high tariff rates are bound to impact the U.S. economy adversely, with a slowdown in world trade happening as a direct result. If Trump does chicken out, however, then this interim period will continue to a new deadline. If more and more countries are actually cutting deals (including more heavyweights like Japan and the E.U.), then Trump will have more of a justification for continuing his pause. "We're in the final stages," he can say, and this time it will be a lot more believable.

But even the lower tariffs levied on the countries which have cut deals are still incredibly high. So even if all the other countries in the world wind up with 15 percent tariff rates, that is still going to have a big impact on the American economy. It will take longer to show up, and the effects will be milder than if the higher tariffs snap back into place, but it will still have an impact nonetheless. By the end of this month, hopefully the picture will be a lot clearer (after the unemployment and inflation numbers are released, and after Russia and China hit their respective deadlines).

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant