WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s blistering critique of American trade policy boils down to a simple equation: Foreigners are “killing us on trade” because Americans spend much more on imports than the rest of the world spends on American exports. China’s unbalanced trade with the United States, he said Tuesday night, is “the greatest theft in the history of the world.”

Add a few “whereins” and “whences” and that sentiment would conform nicely to the worldview of the first Queen Elizabeth of 16th-century England, to the 17th-century court of Louis XIV, or to Prussia’s Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in the 19th century. The great powers of bygone centuries subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, “Wherein we must ever observe this rule: to sell more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in value,” as its apostle, the East India Company director Thomas Mun, wrote in the 1600s.

Now Mr. Trump is bringing mercantilism back. The New York billionaire is challenging the last 200 years of economic orthodoxy that trade among nations is good, and that more is better.

He is well on his way to becoming the first Republican nominee in nearly a century who has called for higher tariffs, or import taxes, as a broad defense against low-cost imports. And there is a good chance he would face a Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who has expressed fewer reservations about trade, inverting a longstanding political dynamic.