Opinion

  President Donald Trump’s economic adviser, Peter Navarro, has vowed to restore US manufacturing supremacy. This is no surprise — Trump’s election campaign emphasized the promise of a return to the industrial economy of the mid-20th century, before countries such as China supplanted the US as the workshop of the world. But this push is unlikely to succeed. Changes in …

  France and South Korea are both members of the rich nations’ club that goes by the clunky name Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Measured by the participation of women in their banking and finance industries, they couldn’t be further apart. Among the 23 Korean companies for which Bloomberg has a breakdown of board and workforce composition, Samsung …

  Like a lot of his plans, Donald Trump’s proposal for military spending is both abundantly clear and maddeningly vague. He wants to devote a whole lot more money to the Pentagon, as demonstrated by his budget outline and address to Congress. But the president’s plan is too ill-defined and arbitrary to make much sense. More military spending isn’t necessarily …

  The trial of Jay Y Lee, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co, in the bribery and influence scandal case began on Thursday. The prosecutors tried to prove Lee donated millions of dollars to charitable foundations controlled by Choi Soon Sil, a confidante of impeached South Korean President Park Geun hye, to help secure the control of Samsung Group. …

  The new push for a “multi-speed Europe,” in which only those countries that want a closer union pursue it, will almost inevitably fuel resentment in Eastern Europe, where politicians are already up in arms about being treated as second-class Europeans. A battle over food quality has become a major proxy for that resentment. The Visegrad Four — Poland, the …

  European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is set to preside over a lot of nothing happening at policy meeting. This would be a missed opportunity. Bundesbank actions are worsening already-dangerous inefficiencies in European markets, and undermining the impact of the ECB’s bond purchases. Draghi has to demonstrate that his Governing Council is not controlled by the Germans. Financial creativity …

  To govern India is to be constantly overwhelmed. So much needs to be done, and there’s so little to do it with. It’s hardly surprising that the Indian state is rarely ambitious. It seeks to manage, not to transform. One recent government initiative, less than a decade old, is by contrast epic in scope: the attempt to provide every …

  If you were writing a pitch for a Hollywood series about the roiling investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible dealings with Russian operatives, you might describe it as ‘Billions’ meets ‘The Americans.’ This plot has already had some weird twists and turns, and we aren’t even at the end of Season One. It’s must-see television, for sure, but disheartening, …

  Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen AG, General Motors Co. and Renault-Nissan Group are the giants of the global industry, each selling about 10 million cars a year and together accounting for almost half of the passenger vehicles produced by major manufacturers worldwide. In India, though, they’re minnows, with a combined market share that’s not much above 10%. To make matters …

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reason to be wary of ambitious reforms to India’s economy, given the fraught rollout of his plan to ban 500- and 1,000-rupee notes overnight. For his country to reach its true economic potential, however, he will need to do something about India’s ailing state banks. These institutions, which account for more than 70 percent …