Opinion

A certain school of thought holds long-term targets as meaningless, as the people making them will no longer be in their job by the time they are proved right or wrong. That’s especially the case for a two-term limited US president. But when it comes to Joe Biden and electric vehicles, it hardly matters whether his new target for 2030 ...

India wants to get on the electric vehicle bandwagon, and is introducing China-style policies to pursue its green ambitions. But there’s a wrinkle: its age-old, protectionist instincts, which have kept out international auto companies for decades. Last month, Elon Musk bemoaned India’s restrictive policies, tweeting that while Tesla Inc wanted to make cars there, “import duties are the highest in ...

In the age of smartphones, international wire transfers belong in money museums. In more than 60 countries, including many developing nations, it has become incredibly easy to send funds in real time to someone else over the internet — knowing nothing more than their mobile phone number. However, 24/7 fast payment systems, a technology that’s starting to work pretty well ...

Sanofi is one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, with billions in reliable annual sales coming from the business. With its $3.2 billion purchase of Translate Bio Inc, the company is coopting a possible disruptor. Translate focuses on messenger RNA, the promising new approach behind the wildly successful Covid vaccines from Pfizer Inc-BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc. Sanofi first partnered ...

Mario Draghi scored big just as he appeared to be on the point of foundering. Six months after taking office, Italy’s prime minister (and former president of the European Central Bank) continues to beat the odds and deliver reforms that have eluded Italy for decades. For 30 years, Italian politicians failed in their efforts to repair the criminal and civil ...

There’s a strong case that Congress should give legal status to millions of immigrants who are here illegally, at least under certain conditions. There’s a case, reasonable though not as strong, that we ought to have legislative rules that allow a bare majority of Congress to make that change in our laws. There is, by contrast, no real case that ...

Chinese billionaire Li Shufu has made a habit of shuffling around the pieces of his sprawling empire to find the best value. Yet none of that grand strategising has addressed his main problem: a growing pile of debt. Every few months, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, the parent company of Hong Kong-listed Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd and Sweden’s Volvo Car ...

With the highly transmissible delta variant spreading rapidly in the US and Covid-19 vaccine uptake in some areas still disappointingly low, it makes sense to push every lever available to get people protected. One underused tool is is the cost of health coverage. Health insurance is a significant expense for many Americans and could create powerful financial motivation for holdouts ...

As President Joe Biden moves towards another legislative victory — namely, the $550 billion infrastructure bill — it’s worth asking what its success says about American politics. Mostly it’s good news, whether or not you agree with the policies of the Biden administration. The most enduring truth is that the median voter theorem, as social scientists refer to it, continues ...

Two decades ago, a Goldman Sachs executive coined the label BRICs to describe four big emerging nations: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Rapid growth and expansion of the ranks of the wealthy in these countries vindicated the faith of investors. Their leaders started to hold annual summit meetings and even established their own development bank. They invited South Africa to ...