Opinion

President Donald Trump once pledged to replace Obamacare with a system that would provide good health insurance for all Americans. His failure to devise such a plan became obvious during his first year in office, as he and the Republican Congress tried in vain to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Various alternatives were floated that would have only increased the ...

Pakistan’s government has finally admitted it needs help. Finance Minister Asad Umar says he will be meeting officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the sidelines of its annual meeting Bali this weekend. There he’ll try and work out the terms for a bailout that would cover a $10 billion hole in Pakistan’s financing needs. The decision has to ...

Japan Inc. is getting its groove back. An overlooked policy change could be a driver. In recent months, Japanese companies have been posting a wave of positive data. Machinery orders — a key indicator of companies’ capital spending in the future — rose 12.6 percent on the year in August to the highest level in a decade, data showed, much ...

As Britain’s negotiations to leave the European Union (EU) enter their crunch moment, let’s be clear on one thing: The EU doesn’t need to punish Britain for leaving; the referendum did that just fine. Latest figures show the warnings of economic self-harm Brexiters like Boris Johnson derided as Project Fear are fast becoming real, while the promises of a Brexit ...

Brexiters have long claimed countries are queuing up to sign trade deals with Britain once it leaves the European Union (EU). It’s one reason they so oppose any Brexit deal that leaves the United Kingdom tied to Europe’s customs union, even temporarily. Right on cue, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the Financial Times this week that the UK would ...

So many internet and software companies make gadgets now. Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook all make some type of internet-connected computing gear. Even Uber has started to engineer its own electric scooters. The one thing all these newcomers have in common is that their hardware businesses are irrelevant. That’s important to remember with Google’s introduction of the latest in its ...

At its best, economics poses a simple question: What makes people better off, and how can we have more of it? This year, the Nobel committee has rightly chosen to honor two academics, William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, who have demonstrated a rare dedication to finding answers — and to making the case for action. Economic growth can be a ...

The rejiggered North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) pulls the Mexican and US economies closer together, and raises the drawbridge to reduce trade with Asia. For Mexicans who already felt too dependent on the US, this is a grim combination. The reconfigured accord, announced last week, seems like another chapter in the global playbook of muscular regionalism. Globalisation is morphing ...

A couple of things happened last week in India that deserve a bit of attention — mostly because they reveal how deep the country’s structural problems go and how few good options the government has left. The first was the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to hold interest rates steady even though the rupee had hit record lows against ...

How do you mislay 75 million euros ($86 million) of operating profit in just three weeks? That’s the question Ceconomy AG investors are asking themselves after the German electronics retailer issued its second profit warning in rapid succession. Bizarrely, the company hasn’t provided an explanation for the further 16 percent downgrade to its operating profit forecast for the financial year ...