Opinion

In placing retaliatory tariffs on certain goods and products, America’s trade partners have signalled how well they understand American politics. By targeting products from areas supportive of President Donald Trump, they clearly hope to generate pressure to lift US tariffs or even create broader political problems for the president. But China is sending much more interesting — and complex — ...

By conventional measures of stock prices, Amazon.com Inc looks very expensive. It’s actually surprisingly cheap. Twenty-one years after it went public, a share of Amazon stock costs 70 times more than the company’s estimated per-share future earnings. That means investors are willing to pay much more for each dollar of Amazon’s earnings than for shares of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet ...

Much has been made of the degradation of the $7.5 trillion US corporate debt market. High yield offers too little, well, yield. And “high grade” now requires air quotes to account for the growing dominance of bonds rated BBB, which is the lowest rung on the investment-grade ladder before dropping into “junk” status. And then there’s the massive market for ...

Britain’s endless self-inflicted turmoil over Brexit has taken a fresh turn, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s new plan for a post-Brexit trade agreement and the resignations of key ministers from her government. She’s accused of betraying those who voted for Brexit, and her leadership might soon be challenged. The prospect of a maximally disruptive “hard Brexit” draws ever closer. Yet ...

When it comes to climate change, I have always been a believer: not in hand-wringing debate, not in unrealistic solutions like the elimination of hydrocarbons, but in the power of action. In 1997, as chief executive of BP, I was the first leader of a major oil company to acknowledge that climate change was a problem, and that the industry ...

The European Central Bank lost control of the euro money market yield curve, and it wants it back. It has just snapped back on the leash by sending as clear a message as it can – within the incredibly tight framework it has set for itself – that it thinks rate expectations are too low. At its last policy meeting, ...

A moment of silence, please, for the world’s cheapest car, which has all but died in India. It was almost 10 years old. The Nano’s death was confirmed by production numbers: Tata Motors Ltd produced 1 unit in June, down from 275 in the same month last year. Exports were zero, versus 25 in June 2017. The company acknowledged that ...

What caused the Great Depression? Most people wou-ld probably say that the trigger was the stock market crash of 1929. From peak to trough, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 88 percent of its value, and the index didn’t regain that peak until the mid-1950s: There was also a housing boom and bust in the 1920s, which was probably ...

The last two major companies holding out against Japan’s plans to consolidate its bloated refinery sector are finally giving in. After almost three years of wrangling driven by Idemitsu Kosan Co’s founding family, the company will merge with Showa Shell Sekiyu KK after shareholders — including those founders, who opposed the initial version of the deal — signed off. The ...

A shoe just dropped for Masayoshi Son. Shares of Yahoo Japan Corp rose as much as 13 percent on Tuesday after SoftBank Group Corp said it will buy $2 billion worth of stock in the internet portal, or an 11 percent stake, from Altaba Inc. Investors were elated because the block sale eased concerns over a messy open-market sale that ...