New Delhi, Aug. 5 -- Donald Trump has imposed stiff tariffs on Indian goods entering the US market. This part of his disruptive mercantilist agenda to bring US trade with the rest of the world back into balance has quite naturally dominated news headlines over the past few months.

The US is our biggest trading partner and economists have been sweating their spreadsheets to give us some initial estimates of how these higher tariffs will affect the Indian economy.

Less attention is being paid to another ongoing shift in US policy. Trump wants to harness the growing popularity of digital finance to strengthen US economic power.

His administration seeks to build a regulatory framework around stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies whose value is ...