Opinion

It’s a terrible feeling to discover that your country is full of strangers. For some in India, the election of Narendra Modi in 2014, with a majority that India hadn’t seen in three decades, was that moment. Everyone knew there was discontent with the status quo; everyone knew that Modi was doing well, better than anyone had expected before he ...

Amazon.com Inc. and British food delivery startup Deliveroo make in some ways cosier bedfellows than Uber Technologies Inc. does with its own competing service, Uber Eats. The US e-commerce giant led a $575 million financing round in London-based Deliveroo. One can’t help but wonder whether the investment is an amuse-bouche for a broader tie-up, a chance for Amazon to get ...

Norbert Reithofer chose a good moment to step down as BMW’s chief executive (he’s now the supervisory board chairman, a less high-profile role). When Reithofer made way for Harald Krueger in May 2015, the US Environmental Protection Agency hadn’t yet publicly accused Volkswagen AG of cheating on diesel emissions, which would imperil an entire technology. That same year Trump announced ...

Fossil fuel never had a better friend in the White House than Donald Trump. So why, two years into his presidency, are investors favouring public companies devoted to renewable energy and giving the Bronx cheer to the coal, gas and oil crowd? Trump campaigned against the scientific consensus on climate change and promised to repeal any regulation that impeded the ...

The impact of the US-China trade spat is no longer limited to just the two countries. The Trump administration’s latest move – seeking to limit access to American suppliers for the Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co. – may force many businesses worldwide to reconsider their own dependence on supply chains that go through China, and consumers their reliance on ...

It seems every major carmaker these days is thinking about electric vehicles in some capacity. At one of the world’s largest auto shows in Shanghai this year, several manufacturers boasted their snazzy concept cars and talked up imminent launches. Electric-vehicle sales are rising fast, and battery installation is climbing — largely thanks to China, where battery demand rose more than ...

It’s been a surprisingly good year for Europe’s government bond markets. Yields are down across the board even though the European Central Bank (ECB) is no longer adding to its 2.7 trillion euro ($3 trillion) bond stockpile. The central bank might not be adding to its holdings, but it’s still maintaining them at that vast level and that has a ...

Prime Minister Theresa May was popular once. That may be hard to remember as she steps down in two weeks’ time, but it’s true. Just three years before her own political party forced her to step aside, she was hailed by politicians and citizens as the wisest choice to lead the UK’s separation from the European Union (EU). Then came ...

When it comes to 5G-enabled smartphones, Britain is a pretty decent bellwether: It’s one of just five countries currently rolling out the new mobile standard. So the decision by BT Group Plc, the UK’s former national carrier, not to offer 5G handsets made by Huawei Technologies Co. augurs badly for the beleaguered Chinese telecoms firm’s consumer aspirations. The mobile operator ...

NarendraModi’s emphatic re-election victory makes inevitable something that was long feared: the transformation of India from secular democracy to Hindu majoritarian state. Far from helping to reverse the global tide of illiberal figures and movements, voters in the world’s largest democracy have advanced it. Modi won with a landslide despite having failed miserably in his central mission: to create jobs ...