The U.K.’s decision to leave the EU and the voting in of the protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency has drawn both the UK and the USA into the Nash Trap.

U.S. mathematician John Nash (the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’) postulated that Adam Smith’s declaration that ‘In competition, individual ambition serves the common good' (the leave approach and Trump’s ‘America First’ proposition) was incomplete.

Instead Nash postulated that the best result is for everyone in the…