Opinion

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just released its latest statistics on US births. Boring, you say. Not so. Historic birth patterns tell us a lot about where the country has been — and where it might be going. We are now experiencing some of the lowest birth figures ever. In 2018, US births totaled 3.788 million, ...

Behind recent US and Iranian military mobilisations lies a perception by each side that the other may be about to attack. This doesn’t appear to be posturing by either nation but is instead a confrontation that could lead to actual conflict if there’s a miscalculation. The United States sent an aircraft carrier task force, bombers and other assets to the ...

It’s no secret the US economy keys off consumption. On that count, it’s beginning to look less and less like an expanding economy. Whether it’s the internals of the first-quarter GDP report or the source of March personal spending, the trend is not the friend of growth in coming months. Some of it comes down to the state of US ...

Last year, the world’s consumers bought more than 2 million electric vehicles. By 2025, they’ll be buying 10 million; by 2040, 56 million, according to BloombergNEF’s new long-term Electric Vehicle Outlook. The report looks at how this fleet will transform transportation as China’s 421,000 electric buses join those millions of personal EVs. As the expanding electric fleet drives electricity demand ...

Having helped carry the African National Congress across the finish line in elections earlier this month, despite South Africans’ impatience with the party’s persistent corruption, President Cyril Ramaphosa will now need to lead his party toward greater reform. It’s the essential first step toward reviving a moribund economy and restoring South Africans’ faith in their future. The ANC’s seemingly robust ...

Exit polls in India have a patchy record. Polling has been off the mark in two of the last four general elections in India, so nobody should assume that the final results, which will begin to be available later this week, will necessarily follow the pattern of the exit polls that were released as voting ended this Sunday. Nevertheless, the ...

Before Terry Gou received a divine message to run for Taiwan’s presidency, the Foxconn founder said that he had stayed awake at night wondering what he could do for today’s youth. That’s an admirable sentiment, but doesn’t much help his own shareholders when they need him most. The company’s major client, accounting for half of sales, is facing the biggest ...

One wouldn’t think Chinese in their 60s worried about the cost of cancer treatment would be a demographic slice that interested high-flying technology companies. However, Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., announced a new product targeted especially to them, part of its Xiang Hu Bao platform. For a small monthly fee, participants will be guaranteed ...

The Trump administration is going about its trade war with China all wrong. Its strategy and tactics are muddled. If Trump were a general watching the battle unfold, what he’d see is his troops getting slaughtered, while the enemy, though suffering casualties, was holding most of its positions. Trump has two goals, says Bill Reinsch, a trade expert at the ...

Spare a thought for Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini. Italy’s youthful deputy prime ministers have little idea of how they will cobble together a budget for next year. The two leaders of the ruling Five Star and League parties must try to stick by their expensive promises to voters, while not upsetting Italy’s euro zone allies and the financial ...