India, March 13 -- The United States, in terms of its global economic outlook, is behaving like a rogue power today. It led the world on the garden path of Washington Consensus economic policies in the post-war era. This also included a rules-based trade liberalisation under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It was a beneficial deal for capital and consumers in advanced countries including the US. But it also created a large cohort of losers among the non-rich in the advanced world, which, eventually created the ground for someone like Donald Trump to capture political power.

Today, Trump is using this political capital to take America away from its trade liberalisation commitment and wreaking havoc on the global trading o...