Opinion

Wary of billion-dollar defaults, China does not want its daredevil real estate developers to take on any more debt. Banks have been asked to limit their housing loan exposure, while developers that cross the so-called “three red lines” — a trio of leverage metrics Beijing watches — are forbidden from borrowing more. Investors are clearly worried. China Fortune Land Development ...

In a few days, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi will take possession of the most coveted prize in US politics: unified control of the federal government. They shouldn’t expect it to last — and they should govern that way. That means moving both aggressively (to get people back to work) and cautiously (to avoid the kind of overreach ...

The pandemic has ended a plucky attempt to break the stranglehold that carriers like British Airways and Delta Air Lines Inc have on the transatlantic market. Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA’s decision to cease long-haul services to ensure its survival won’t surprise anyone familiar with its years-long struggle to make money. But this may not be the end of attempts to ...

Honestly, it hasn’t been a great month for Franco-American energy relations. First, a Texas Railroad Commissioner fired off a jeremiad at Engie SA for turning up its nose at US gas. Now Total SE, the French oil champion, is pulling out of the big kahuna of industry lobbyists, the American Petroleum Institute (API). The move is a bombshell but one ...

China’s recovery from the depth of the Covid-19 slump is impressive, and the country will almost certainly be the only major economic power to end 2020 in positive territory. Another world-beating expansion is expected this year. But for all the superlatives, Beijing is years away from becoming a global economic leader. Gross domestic product rose 6.5% in the fourth quarter ...

Covid-19 exposed all the flaws of both national and international governance. The World Health Organization struggled. Too many countries, even those supposedly best prepared for a pandemic, flailed and failed to grasp lessons from each other’s experiences, at the cost of 2 million lives and trillions of dollars. Has the world rectified those weaknesses? A vaccination campaign of record size ...

When Ford Motor Company announced it was shuttering its operations in Brazil, the reaction was swift and shrill. Adversaries of President Jair Bolsonaro were quick to blame official neglect and ineptitude, to the delight of cartoonists and social media warriors. Bolsonaro faulted decades of dirigisme and accused Ford of plumping for subsidies, even as the Economy Ministry scolded the automaker ...

Consumers didn’t end 2020 with a bang, Commerce Department retail sales figures show. But the unusual dynamics of a year defined by the pandemic — which gave rise to trends such as shoppers buying Christmas gifts earlier and shifting their spending from experiences to goods — meant a December pullback didn’t stop the retail industry from enjoying a solid holiday ...

As details emerge about the Janaury 6 attack on the Capitol, it’s become clear that some of the rioters were planning far worse acts of violence, and national-security officials at all levels of government were utterly unprepared. Congress should conduct an urgent and thorough investigation to determine what went wrong and how to stop it from happening again. The immediate ...

The US never fully recovered from the Great Recession. One of the benefits of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package unveiled last night by President-elect Joe Biden is that — in addition to helping Americans hurt by the pandemic — it could help America accomplish that goal. At that point, US politics can safely return to arguments about whether tax ...