A “dirty bomb” has been detonated under the United States economy with China holding the cards, warns a finance expert. A trade war between the world’s two biggest economies is now in full swing which could end in devastation for America in just over a month’s time.

Although Donald Trump’s trade war with China has scarcely begun Molsen Hart, CEO of educational toy company Viahart and founder of legal tech company Edison, believes it’s already clear who will be the victor. Fears of a global recession have heightened ever since China refused to back down and instead retaliated by raising tariffs on US goods to 125% with Chinese President Xi Jinping‘s government repeatedly saying it would “fight to the end”.

And now Mr Hart reckons he has worked out the exact date America will start to feel “lockdown” type side effects.

The expert has pointed out that the US will not feel any economic repercussions until May 10 – a month after the “China to USA trade shut down”, as it takes “30 days for containers to go from China to LA”.

Mr Hart said America hurtling “towards a brick wall” with the driver unable to see it but by the time the country does “it will be too late to hit the brakes”. Around May 10 Mr Hart predicts the trucking industry will “dry up”.

Marko Kolanovic, a former managing director at JPMorgan, likened the situation to a radiactive bomb being let off, followed by a lag ahead of an inevitable “radioactive cloud” appearing on the horizon.

In his X post, Mr Hart continued: “Warehouses will start doing layoffs because no labor is needed to unload containers and some products will be out of stock, reducing the need for shipping labour.

“All this will start in the Los Angeles area. After about 2 weeks, it’ll start hitting Chicago and Houston.”

Mr Hart then proposes the scenario that the White House does a U-turn and changes its mind on May 31, reverting tariffs back to zero to which Beijing agrees with.

“The problem is, even under the most favorable conditions of China and the factories restarting economic ties as though nothing happened, it will be at least another 30 days before economic activity is revived”, warns Mr Hart.

He added: “And that’s just in LA. In Chicago/Houston, you’ll need to wait another 45 days.

“New York, at that point, will still be getting containers from before April 10th, they will then have 50 days (May 31 minus April 10) of zero economic activity at the ports, in trucking of Chinese goods, in warehousing.”

However, it is increasingly unlikely that China will forgive and forget and even if they do decide to put their disagreement with the US behind them “it takes a long time to get economic activity back to where it was, if you ever can”.