Opinion

Brazil can’t seem to catch a break. It’s suffering the worst economic slump in decades; its president may be thrown out of office; it’s contending with the zika virus. Now, to add to these indignities, come the huge subsidies to pay for this summer’s Olympics. The costs exceed $10 billion, with only a fraction to be covered by revenues from ...

  Taiwan is between a rock and a hard place. It needs China for economic reasons, but continues to be apprehensive about Beijing’s “assertive policy”. The future path of Taiwan’s independence-leaning president-elect Tsai Ing-wen is fraught with economic challenges as the island’s economy has been contracting year-on-year for three straight quarters. Beijing’s fears that Tsai may not sustain the ‘one ...

  Narayana Kocherlakota The U.S. government seems concerned about what will happen if other big nations push down the value of their currencies against the dollar. Actually, it could be good for the global economy. Ahead of this week’s meeting of finance ministers from the Group of Seven developed nations, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has warned that the U.S.’s counterparts ...

On Monday, China heavily criticized the European Parliament for a resolution passed last week that squarely took aim at Beijing’s bid for market economy status at the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the non-binding resolution last Thursday, EU legislators declared that China still fails to meet the criteria for a market economy as defined by EU law and that there ...

  Taiwan will inaugurate a new president this week who China hates but America should love. On Friday, Taiwan’s newly elected president, Tsai Ing-wen, will come into office amidst a storm of controversy and scandal. She will then begin a long hard slog through a cross-Strait political minefield, alienated from the world and increasingly unpopular at home. That is, if ...

  Duyen Bui SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Vietnamese officials and the Vietnamese people are waiting in anticipation to welcome U.S. President Barack Obama in about a week. But each have very different reasons for awaiting Obama’s visit. The Vietnamese government will be laying out the red carpet for the leader of its former enemy, with whom it now seeks alliances ...

U.S. President Barack Obama’s impending trip to Japan for the G7 summit looks likely to be overshadowed by his planned visit to Hiroshima, a first for a sitting U.S. president. There has been extensive debate both among scholars and in the public arena about the justification for the use of nuclear weapons against Japan. This debate mirrors debates that were ...

  Given its crucial role as an investment gateway to mainland China, Beijing is striving to appease a sullen Hong Kong during the visit of high ranking Chinese official, Zhang Dejiang, who chairs China’s communist-controlled legislature. The world’s second largest economy is set to strike a compromise between the strategic position of Hong Kong as an investment hub on one ...

  Have some money you want to donate, with the goal of bringing about political change? Whatever you do, don’t give it to Hillary Clinton. Or Donald Trump. It isn’t that there’s anything particularly wrong with either candidate. It’s that money donated to presidential general-election candidates is mostly wasted. This is the lesson the Koch brothers have apparently learned. In ...

  Luke Hunt SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS When Cambodia announced plans to reintroduce tigers into the wild, the response was predictably negative. The country’s overarching reputation for corruption and mismanagement rose to the fore with its critics using an endangered species to carp about well-documented inadequacies. The Indochina tiger has been functionally extinct for several years. It was initially reported ...