India, April 4 -- The liberal commentariat is aghast by Donald Trump's declaration of a trade war on the world. A lot of the criticism is justified and historically informed. Tariffs hardly change fortunes of a country or its working people. Often, they make things worse because of higher prices in the domestic economy or widespread retaliation from other countries. When the world's largest economy is the one playing this dangerous game, the impact is unlikely to be confined within its borders.

So far, so good. But how did the world, more importantly, the US get here? After all, it is the US which engineered the global economic regime, the multilateral trading order included, as it stands today. It did not lose its economic dominance, at...