Opinion

  Politics and meanness are undermining an attempt to create a new French aerospace champion. Safran SA’s 9.7 billion euro ($10.3 billion) offer for industry supplier Zodiac Aerospace is structured in a way that threatens to give the state a better deal than ordinary shareholders. Safran has secured the agreement of Zodiac’s board for a deal that’s been circling for …

  The biggest long-term threat to the iPhone isn’t Android, Samsung Electronics Co. or China’s bevy of cheap phone makers. Instead, it’s a deceptively simple idea: Apps work better if you embed them in a single program, rather than let them proliferate across your home screen. WeChat, China’s leading social media app, just launched a new platform with exactly that …

  The question that swirls around Donald Trump’s inaugural address is whether his aggressively pronounced policy of America First will actually result in America Last — not literally last, but declining in power and prestige because the United States no longer views its role in the world as promoting economic and geopolitical stability for our allies. Instead, he imagines a …

  As if the bond market wasn’t facing enough headwinds, with inflation starting to stir and the Federal Reserve forecasting a faster pace of interest-rate increases. Now we get news that China dumped more US Treasuries in November than any time since 2011. It’s premature to say the $66.4 billion of net sales were in response to Donald Trump’s election …

  Chelsea Manning may be getting out of prison in a few months, but the effects of former President Barack Obama’s commutation of her sentence will last far longer. In this case, Obama made a serious error of judgment. Proponents of clemency for Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst convicted in 2013 of leaking classified material, make plenty of …

  Turkey’s parliament cleared the decks for constitutional reform that would concentrate even more powers in the office of the president. The parliament voted 339-142 to make the president the head of the executive and abolish the job of prime minister. The voters of the country will decide in a referendum on the proposal. In Turkey’s system, amendments to the …

  The British government is making a twofold gamble on finance and Brexit. First, ministers seem to believe that London’s financial firms are crying wolf when they warn about the potential domestic cost of a so-called hard Brexit. Second, British officials seem convinced that the European Union is so reliant on the City that threats to raise the drawbridge are …

  lf Mark Schneider, the new chief executive of Nestle SA, is wasting no time in hunting out acquisitions.The Swiss consumer group is considering a takeover of Mead Johnson Nutrition Co., the US baby-formula producer, according to a report yesterday from StreetInsider. But right now, Nestle’s sprawling portfolio needs pruning, not fresh additions. This looks like a deal it should …

  It is no exaggeration to say that a bizarre new phase in human history began on January 20 as Donald J. Trump becomes the world’s most powerful man. All bets, to put it mildly, are off. Those entrusted to report on and analyze the contemporary world are especially befuddled. One can condemn Trump’s open loathing for the mainstream media. …

  Leaving aside the missing element of grace and the improbability of his ever stopping to think, Donald Trump is the waterbeetle of politics. His feral cunning in manipulating the masses and the media is, like the waterbeetle’s facility, instinctive. The 72 days of transition demonstrated a stylistic seamlessness with his 511 days of campaigning, which indicates that the 1,461 …