Opinion

In Britain’s retail apocalypse, culling staff might seem like an obvious course of action for hard-pressed store chains. But cut too deep, and the damage inflicted on the business can be even more devastating than Brexit-induced nervousness. Tesco is looking to eliminate up to 9,000 jobs – about half of which could be shifted elsewhere in the company – as ...

With high-stakes trade talks set to resume in Washington, US officials say any deal with China hinges on how it can be enforced. That is indeed a key issue. But to have any hope of success, the US can’t be entirely worried about whether China might cheat. It also needs to consider what conditions would best encourage Beijing to comply. ...

“I’m really enjoying the season finale of the UK,” quipped Irish software engineer Damian Sullivan on Twitter. His joke may not be far off the mark. Brexit negotiations are looking more and more like the type of destructive brinkmanship that the US has seen in recent years. But the stakes are much higher in the UK — rather than just ...

In the past decade, China has relied primarily on credit growth to fund its economic ambitions. The country’s banks are now feeling the constraints of this lending binge and need to raise a lot of capital over the next couple of years. The way China handles this challenge will determine its economic health. With 267 trillion yuan ($39.4 trillion) of ...

Facebook Inc.’s “family” of apps is about to get even closer. The New York Times reported that Facebook is planning to more closely integrate the apps it owns, including its Messenger and WhatsApp instant chat services, as well as photo-and-video-focused Instagram. The decision is both an inevitable end to independence for properties that Facebook acquired and initially left largely alone, ...

Now that the government shutdown is over, perhaps it is appropriate to consider a delicate question: Is it still OK to tell people they need to save more money? It’s an issue that came to the fore during the last five weeks, when hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, and many contractors, didn’t get paid, leaving many of them ...

For the past year, the US and China have been engaged in a wide-ranging trade war. Nominally, the dispute concerns intellectual-property violations, forced technology transfers and other unfair practices. In reality, though, this clash is a symptom of a much larger strategic showdown — one in which Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks “decisive victory.” Aided by technology, China is embarking ...

The exodus from London is getting real. Ever since the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016, people have been watching for signs of how the prospect might affect London’s role as a global financial center. It stood to reason that it should: Assuming the breakup meant that the UK units of global banks would lose ...

An adviser to Europe’s top court issued an opinion this month on behalf of liberty, judicial restraint and common sense. Here’s hoping the court heeds his recommendations. At issue was the so-called right to be forgotten, a muddled and misguided legal concept under which any citizen of the European Union can ask search-engine companies like Google to take down links ...

On February 1 in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will present its last federal budget before general elections are held in a few months. Unlike most other budgets, this typically isn’t a high-octane affair; governments are discouraged from locking their successors into any new spending or taxes. An “interim” budget, as it’s called, tries to avoid committing spending for ...