With considerable fanfare, President Trump on Monday unveiled his administration’s much-anticipated national security strategy giving expanded and more concrete meaning to his “America First” campaign slogan. Arguing that China and Russia are U.S. competitors for power on the world stage, the policy statement emphasizes the administration’s desire to balance the books when America engages in trade with any country.

The old notion that flows of trade and payments should balance — that an imbalance in trade with China, for example, may be offset by a new Volvo assembly plant built with Chinese dollars in South Carolina — is no longer relevant. Instead, reciprocity — if we buy this much from you, you should buy the same from us — has become the Trump administration’s golden rule.