Opinion

GrabTaxi Holdings Pte has a lot of smart people on its payroll. Let’s hope the transportation startup spends more time listening to its economists. Yeah I know, startup and economics in the same sentence. Go-Jek Indonesia PT’s entry into Singapore was inevitable the moment Grab bought out the local business of Uber Technologies Inc. It already had its sights on ...

In a series of tweets, President Donald Trump announced that he was a ‘Tariff Man,’ trumpeting the revenue raised by tariffs and declaring that import taxes would maximise the US’s economic power: As Paul Krugman pointed out, it’s a fallacy to think that foreigners are the only ones paying the tariff bill. US consumers pay as well. Believing that tariffs ...

A recent New York Times investigation described how Facebook bungled its response to the misinformation that has proliferated on its platform. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in an interview that the problems his company is grappling with “are not issues that any one company can address.” He’s right: The problem of fake news has become too big for any social ...

It’s true that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is not independent, but the central bank of the world’s second-largest economy is outgrowing that excuse. There’s plenty it can and should do without explicit sign-off from above. Start by tackling what a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) paper calls low-hanging fruits. This is basic and important stuff like beefed-up forecasts, ...

Even as politicians in the US and Europe rage about foreigners supposedly swamping their shores, one of the world’s most insular countries — Japan — is on the verge of passing what might be its most sweeping immigration reform to date. Welcome as this would be, the plan isn’t sweeping enough. A bill approved by the lower house of the ...

When Tony Blair and Boris Johnson unite in their condemnation of the ‘deal’ under which UK Prime Minister Theresa May proposes that the UK should leave the EU, you know something has gone badly wrong. The withdrawal agreement is less a carefully crafted diplomatic compromise and more the result of incompetence of a high order. I have friends who are ...

Sorry, Donald Trump: General Motors Co. isn’t leaving China anytime soon. It can’t and it won’t. After the automaker announced plant closings across North America as part of a wide-ranging restructuring plan, the president lashed out on Twitter, threatening to strip GM of any US government subsidies. He also pointed out that nothing was “being closed in Mexico & China” ...

Coal is an anachronism that also happens to be the single largest source of electricity on the planet. Some of its resilience reflects pure politics (“beautiful clean coal”). But there’s another aspect more akin to that guilty pleasure that floods through you when you devour a hamburger. Like you, sometimes a country wants energy fast and doesn’t want to pay ...

The G-20 Summit in Argentina ended without fireworks involving the US, which was appropriate in a way, given the pall cast by the death of President George H.W. Bush. The US went along with a watered-down communique rather than stand in the way of a consensus, as it recently did at the Apec summit and the G-7. And rather than ...

If you don’t follow the regular trials and tribulations of technology companies or have been living in a cave for five years, it might be surprising that Microsoft Corp. is poised to surpass Apple Inc. as the world’s most valuable public company. While the baton was passed briefly last week, it most likely won’t be long until Microsoft is firmly ...