Opinion

Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, is no longer in control of events. The Brexit withdrawal agreement she’s currently defending in Parliament has, with reason, been savaged by all sides and seems likely to be rejected in the vote planned for next week. Already, thoughts are turning to Plan B. The best course is evident: a second referendum, one that would ...

Larry Kudlow, one of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers, recently said that the administration would end subsidies for electric cars and other renewable-energy technologies. Under the existing program, buyers of electric vehicles get a federal tax credit of $2,500 to $7,500. It’s unlikely that Trump can eliminate the program without an act of Congress, which seems unlikely given that ...

Clutch your pearls. Prepare the fainting couches. Are you ready for this bombshell? Apple Inc. actually has to try to sell its phones. How embarrassing. Bloomberg News had a look inside the Apple empire, which has shifted some staff members to work on marketing the latest iPhone models released this fall, and the company or its partners are deploying incentives ...

Singapore is getting ready for polls. Because a single party has ruled uninterrupted since 1959, the real importance of the next election lies in the rare leadership transition that will take place afterwards. Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat’s well-choreographed elevation as the city-state’s fourth prime minister is expected to signal policy continuity, though immigration is one area where the status ...

Just because the US and China have agreed to call a truce in their trade war doesn’t mean that it’s over: This was a classic exercise in can-kicking. Nonetheless, most cans have quite a few kicks in them, and overall this is good news for the global economy. Instead of sweeping everything under the rug, as was the case before ...

At an Aldi grocery store overlooking the rugged Kent coast in southeast England, customers are loading up their shopping carts. It’s the same situation at a Lidl outpost in scenic Oban, Scotland. The British love affair with the German no-frills supermarkets started about a decade ago, and shows no signs of abating. And that will be crucial in determining whether ...

France and Germany have now reached a consensus on how to tax some of the Silicon Valley giants. America, the ball’s in your court. The two countries released a statement declaring their support for a 3 percent tax on digital ads, providing a breakthrough in European Union wrangling on how to deal with big tech. It’s essentially a levy on ...

Faced with increasingly violent protests, French President Emmanuel Macron has suspended his plan to raise fuel taxes. The climbdown is a concession to political necessity, but it shouldn’t be confused with smart policy, and it shouldn’t deflect Macron from his larger goals. Even in a country with a fabled tradition of riotous dissent, the intensity of the protests in France ...

The uncertainty of the ongoing Brexit drama is taking an emotional toll on the British public. Since the original vote in 2016, there has been a 13.7 percent increase in prescriptions for antidepressants relative to other drugs. Political chaos has consequences for public health. Indeed, the results of a new study suggest that people subjected to long periods of intense ...

What’s a troubled social network to do? Facing a crisis of confidence, Facebook appears to struggle to take actions on its own, whether out of uncertainty or stubbornness, and it’s not clear a divided Congress and the Trump administration could agree on regulatory actions to force its hand. One simple first step would be a bit more financial transparency. Inspired ...