It’s puzzling how President Trump’s erratic trade initiatives aren’t prioritizing good relationships with democratic countries and nudging autocratic countries, like China and Saudi Arabia, to give citizens the right to debate and elect their political leaders.

U.S. trade policies have always had multiple rationales. One, perhaps the oldest, is to protect jobs in industries that are “infant” or strategically important. For example, in the latter half of the 19th century, the American government vigorously protected steel from British and German competition, both to supply the imm...