Opinion

It’s been a long time since the UK was the undisputed star of the show for Tesco Plc. But Britain’s biggest retailer on Wednesday announced a step-up in domestic same-store sales growth to 2.5 percent in the second quarter of its financial year. A strong showing from the recently acquired Booker Group Plc, a British wholesaler, and an increase in ...

Automakers in the US just had a bad month. Buckle up: It’s going to get worse. Sales cratered in September. Toyota Motor Corp.’s dropped 10 percent, Honda Motor Co.’s were down 7 percent, Ford Motor Co. posted a decline of about 11 percent and Nissan Motor Co. saw deliveries fall 12 percent. A worsening US auto market should be no ...

On Monday President Donald Trump announced the end of Nafta, the trade agreement he’s repeatedly called a “disaster” for US workers, and hailed its successor, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as the greatest trade deal ever seen. As you might therefore expect, the new agreement is just a lightly tweaked version of the old. Despite the president’s theatrics, Nafta lives on. ...

On Monday, Uber returned to Dusseldorf, Germany, a city it was forced to abandon in 2015. This is a victory both for German regulators and for Uber, or rather, for its new version under Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi. It shows that the San Francisco-based company can actually function as a tech platform, rather than as a taxi business that pretends ...

What if everyone is wrong about Apple Inc.’s most closely watched growth business? Investors have been obsessed with what Apple calls its “services” segment — a grab bag that includes the company’s cut of iPhone app sales; the AppleCare warranty program for devices; and subscriptions for internet add-ons including Apple Music, iCloud digital file storage and perhaps soon a Netflix-like ...

India’s extraordinary attempt to give every resident a biometric ID, the Aadhaar project, has just been declared constitutional — in part — by the country’s Supreme Court. It was hard to imagine any other outcome; too much time and money had been spent on Aadhaar, and too many of India’s poorest people had waited patiently in line for their chance ...

Beyond retaliating with more tariffs and ads in Iowa newspapers, Chinese leaders have yet to devise a coherent strategy for contending with US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war. Perhaps they can’t figure out what his divided and erratic administration actually wants. Or maybe they’re so dead set on pursuing their own economic agenda that they just don’t care. There ...

Having followed Gita Gopinath’s work closely for several years, I am delighted the International Monetary Fund appointed her to head its influential research department as chief economist. Gopinath, a professor of International Studies and Economics at Harvard University and co-director of the International Finance and Macroeconomics program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, brings expertise, insights and cognitive diversity ...

EWarning: Steep grade ahead. When the US economic expansion reverses, and when emerging markets start to slip faster, the world’s central banks may not be able to help. Of course, the next recession may not be another “great recession.” And I’m not predicting it’s imminent. For now the Federal Reserve is continuing to raise interest rates on schedule, and Europe ...

Early next year, the European Union’s highest court is expected to rule on one of the internet’s most controversial topics: the right to be forgotten. The judges should curb their ambition, lest they open a can of worms that will spill well beyond Europe. The right, enshrined in privacy law, allows Europeans to demand that information about them be removed ...