Mr. Trump has fully aligned himself with big pharma’s trade agenda, seeking to raise intellectual property protection in other nations to levels similar to that in the United States. In high-tech and financial services, two other areas where American firms have traditionally lobbied heavily, his objectives mimic those of previous administrations. He wants the reduction or elimination of barriers to United States investment abroad, while domestic restrictions on foreign investment — in shipping, for example, and many other areas ostensibly related to national security — naturally remain untouched.

Mr. Trump does pay lip service to upholding labor and environmental standards, which were shifted to side agreements in the original Nafta negotiations. But he has little interest in domestic policies that would really help those hurt by trade.

A truly fairer globalization would start at home, with a reconstruction of the social compact that binds the corporate elite and the wealthy to labor and the middle class. Every society that opens itself up to the world economy needs social transfers, labor-training programs and regional policies that take care of the adversely affected workers and communities. Our domestic approach, over-reliant on underfunded and ineffective trade-adjustment assistance policies, has not worked and needs to be replaced by more extensive safety nets.

These must be complemented with more progressive income taxation, employment-generating policies such as infrastructure investment and political reforms that reduce the role of money in politics. Mr. Trump and the Republicans want to take us in exactly the opposite direction, with a tax reform that will benefit the wealthy first and foremost.

The problem with Mr. Trump’s economic nationalism is not his avowed belief that trade should serve the national interest. When we economists teach the theory of trade, we emphasize that free trade is desirable because it expands the domestic economic pie — not because it confers gains to other nations. The problem is that he is deeply averse to the domestic policies that would allow American workers a piece of the added pie.

International fairness in turn would require us to recognize that all countries have legitimate reasons to value their national sovereignty. Rules for finance or intellectual property that, for good or ill, prevail in the United States will frequently be unsuited to other countries. Our trade policy should not be driven by big banks and pharma companies that show very little concern for such considerations.

Mr. Trump’s failure to distance himself from special-interest globalization is perhaps not surprising. But it exposes the vacuity of his brand of populism. Despite all his talk about fairness and the need to stand up for ordinary working people, he has little to offer his core constituency. He will exacerbate, rather than mend, the grievances that made his presidency possible.