Opinion

As the year ends, a partial and brief ceasefire seems imminent in Donald Trump’s trade war on the world. The United States and China may sign a deal as early as next month. But make no mistake: The protectionist impulse behind the trade war remains as ineradicable as ever. Nor should it be forgotten that economic nationalism has guided the ...

He’s making a list and checking it twice, but can’t find a takeover target that’s nice. Warren Buffett is the jolly man of the stock market. However, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has also been a bit of a Scrooge this year, as he continues to pass up acquisitions and instead hoard his money. The billionaire has ...

China has a mounting debt problem. Not just over-leveraged companies, but a rapid build-up on household balance sheets that is hitting records. You can blame youth for a borrowing binge that, if left unchecked, could be China’s next credit bubble. Household debt hit levels of 57% of gross domestic product in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Matthew ...

After the financial crisis, Europe’s political leaders put together a complex set of rules to make it harder for future governments to bail out banks. That system is looking so full of holes that one wonders what the point of it is. Two episodes in a fortnight show that taxpayers are still very much on the hook for the financial ...

Thirty years ago, India endured its last big financial crisis when it had to send gold held in the central bank’s vaults over to London to borrow hard currency from the Bank of England. Luckily, the flights landed safely, and so did India. The turnaround in economic thinking triggered by that balance-of-payments humiliation saw the state shed controls on production ...

According to Elizabeth Warren, economists who say that her proposed wealth tax would stifle investment and growth are “just wrong.” Leaving aside the question of whether economic projections, which by definition require assumptions about future human behaviour, can be right or wrong, it is true that her proposal has spurred a vigorous debate among economists. A lot of the points ...

America is going to have to reckon with an internet that is becoming less American. Some US lawmakers on both sides of the partisan divide have said they are worried about TikTok, the app that lets users record and share short videos or dance routines to music. The app quickly became popular in the US and some other countries, and ...

President Trump has essentially declared victory in his relentless trade wars against China and Mexico, but whether this is a lasting triumph or just a truce remains to be seen. Even Trump may not know what comes next. Here’s a summary of what’s happened recently. First, China. It agreed to buy substantial amounts of US exports over the next two ...

If you’re searching for an example of how not to deal with negative rates, look no further than Sweden. The Riksbank chose to raise its repo rate back to zero, after years of negative rates, but it’s not at all clear why. Sweden’s economic outlook hardly suggests a hike is needed. Inflation is running at 1.7%, which is just below ...

It seems like Motorola has invented a 2019 version of the Flux Capacitor. That fictitious device from “Back to the Future” made time travel possible. Now, the phone division of Lenovo Group Ltd. has to overcome the same kinds of struggles faced by the vintage film’s DeLorean-driving scientist. Rather than racing to meet a lightning bolt, Motorola is rushing to ...