Opinion

President Donald Trump may not have much to say about artificial intelligence (AI) on his Twitter feed. But credit where it’s due: His administration has come up with a smart plan to ensure the US keeps up in an increasingly crucial industry. By any measure, AI holds immense promise. It’s likely to boost productivity, stimulate demand, encourage innovation, vastly improve ...

Vietnam is more than a convenient neutral site for the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which is slated for later this month. The Southeast Asian nation is being held up as a model for what Kim’s isolated country could become if he adopts sweeping market reforms. It’s an especially apt comparison, ...

Five months. That’s how long it takes Country Garden Holdings Co. to start selling apartments after acquiring land. A spate of fatal accidents forced the Chinese builder to slow things down a notch last year, but the pace of construction may pick up again when robots start plastering the walls. The pressure to finish comes from the markets: Of the ...

Most of us have a few coins lost down the backs of our sofas. Only the foolish think they can solve their money worries by fishing them out. That’s more or less what politicians in Venezuela and Italy are contemplating at the moment, though. The Latin American government sold more than 40 percent of its gold reserves last year to ...

In 1994, the Clinton administration decreed a bright shining future for education. Its Goals 2000 legislation proclaimed that by that year America’s high school graduation rate would be 90 percent and American students would lead the world in math and science achievements. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., was unimpressed: “That will not happen.” It didn’t, to the surprise of no ...

When Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016, most economists expected the country’s economy to decelerate sharply. The slowdown has finally arrived. The sudden drop in economic activity at the end of 2018 raises the stakes for the British political class, which has been dithering over the future relationship with the EU as the UK enjoyed a relatively ...

Slowing the inexorable rise of Facebook Inc. and Google, the gatekeepers for news consumption online, can be a fool’s errand. For all the noise of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook’s revenue still grew by 37 percent last year, while Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s sales climbed 23 percent. Meanwhile, publishers’ revenue has faced a relentless squeeze as Silicon Valley sucks up ...

Brace yourself: A growing number of hard-up Chinese borrowers aren’t making good on their debts. The pattern is all too familiar. After a record year of defaults in 2018, two big issuers failed to meet their obligations in recent weeks. Coal miner Wintime Energy Co., one of China’s biggest defaulters last year, missed interest payments again this month. Beijing Orient ...

Here we go again: Britain’s parliament is debating Brexit and Prime Minister Theresa May is playing for more time as various factions try to influence the endgame. Her goal is to deliver her divorce deal without dividing her party. So what’s new? For one thing, the time left on the clock. Just 45 days remain until Britain exits on March ...

Gucci’s gaudy creations are moving from cutting-edge to classic. But there are signs that some investors might be starting to look elsewhere for the next big thing. The fashion house’s French parent company, Kering SA, said that Gucci’s organic sales rose 28.1% year-on-year in the last three months of 2018. That’s an impressive performance given that it was being compared ...