Opinion

Five years ago, in a routine display of trash talking, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk made a now infamous quip about how hard it is to manufacture automobiles. “Cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches,’’ he told German newspaper Handelsblatt. “You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say: Build me a car.” He may be proven ...

Huawei Technologies Co. has become very much the US’s whipping boy in the battle to nip China’s technological ascendancy in the bud. President Donald Trump’s administration has slapped sanctions and curbs on the Shenzhen-based company and lobbied allies to do the same. Last month growing resistance against Huawei among lawmakers in Germany’s governing coalition sparked threats of retaliation from the ...

With power and wealth concentration on the minds of politicians and voters in an election year, one overlooked culprit is the airline industry. Thanks in part to deregulation and consolidation of the industry during the past several decades, airlines have focused their operations in big hub airports and major coastal markets as a way of reducing excess capacity and improving ...

Traders who make a living betting on mergers still won’t touch T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp.’s deal with a 10-foot pole. The wireless carriers may have been able to butter up two federal regulatory authorities by using the wonders of a 5G-powered America to distract from their deal’s likely competitive harm. Even so, merger-arbitrage traders live in a world ...

Policy makers and voters often express concern about the level of the federal deficit, which topped $1 trillion last year, and the national debt, now more than $23 trillion. But, unlike a household that owes money to a bank, the US government has the ability to tax its creditors. This power means that the federal government can afford any level ...

Investors keep flocking to private equity in Asia even though returns are declining. They should take heed: Payouts are likely to get worse from here, rather than better. The hunt for yield in a low-interest world has spurred institutional investors from China Investment Corp. to Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund to join the rush into the alternative asset class. Private ...

The troubled Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA took another big step in its long path to redemption last week by selling subordinated debt for the second time in six months. An 8% coupon is expensive for the world’s oldest bank, but it can hardly complain given its years of troubles. Even though the yield is enticing, ...

The cognoscenti of international economics are once again agape, and not in a flattering way, at the budget surpluses Germany’s government keeps running, when instead it should be stimulating the economy with tax cuts and higher spending. The surplus revealed this week for 2019, at 13.5 billion euros ($15 billion), is the fifth in a row, and the biggest ever. ...

An hour’s drive northwest of here, in the Valley of the Fallen, is a residue of Europe’s past that suggests what the continent’s future would have been if fascism had not been defeated in the previous century. Atop a granite mountain stands an almost 500-foot-tall stone cross, the world’s tallest. An enormous basilica has been hewn deep into the mountain. ...

Bangkok’s billionaires don’t usually have to contend with much resistance as they expand. Tesco Plc’s sale of its Southeast Asian supermarkets may be about to change that. The $32 billion British retailer said in December it was considering selling the group’s stores in Thailand and Malaysia, becoming the latest international grocery giant to bow out of Asia. First-round bids for ...