Opinion

Bringing manufacturing back to Europe — what’s called “reshoring” or “onshoring” — is a reasonable, if not vital, business strategy. Over the previous two decades, manufacturers shifted production of everything from cars to cosmetics primarily eastwards to China, in an attempt to cut labor costs and protect margins. The supply chain snarls brought on by geopolitics and Covid-19 are now ...

  Wall Street’s focus seems to have changed in recent days from how fast and how high the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to the timing of the next recession. The two are not mutually exclusive. The consensus is that the Fed is so far behind that curve when it comes to increasing rates that it will have no ...

  The law of conservation of energy is ingrained in every high school science student: Energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed or transferred. The global natural gas market represents the political version of that primary tenet of thermodynamics. Europe’s demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to replace Russian imports has now been transferred to the US. Until now, ...

French President Emmanuel Macron seems likely to defeat Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist-chauvinist National Rally, in the runoff election. That would be a relief — but what’s already happened in this race is disturbing regardless. Macron is essentially all that remains of the French political centre, which is destined to shrink until it finds a way to answer ...

To wipe out superheroes, the villain of the Pixar movie “The Incredibles” had a fiendish plot: He would make them ubiquitous. “When everyone’s super,” the villain named Syndrome opined, “no one will be.” The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) has no such diabolical goals. Yet it’s at risk of making Japan stocks just as irrelevant with its much-hyped but disappointing market ...

  Investors are used to hearing company executives on earnings calls and in presentations sugarcoat the performance of their business. So it’s surprising when there’s a straight-up admission that “despite our best efforts, the moats that protect this company are not particularly deep.” When the speaker is JPMorgan Chase & Co Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon in his ...

  As negotiators from the International Monetary Fund try to hash out a bailout for Sri Lanka at talks in Washington this week, they’ll no doubt press the need for stringent economic reforms. Any such rescue will fail unless political changes are made, too. Politics helped bring about the country’s current crisis. An earlier government led by then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa ...

Associated British Foods Plc’s Primark is not the only European discounter winning over American shoppers. Research from footfall-analysis company Placer.ai shows that budget grocers Aldi Einkauf SE and German rival Lidl, part of Germany’s Schwarz Group, are gaining traction with US consumers too. This could accelerate further as inflation takes its toll on household spending. And that should worry the ...

Cranks are considered cranks for a reason. That is the lesson from Sri Lanka, which has halted payments of its foreign debt and warned that it may default. The country’s ruling dynasty — led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Prime Minister (and former president) Mahinda Rajapaksa — have lost most of their cabinet and parliamentary majority. Earlier this ...

  Singapore’s finance minister, Lawrence Wong, has solidified his place as the front runner to succeed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. As the now-undisputed leader of a rising political class, the top job is his to lose. Just don’t expect the Lee era to end next month, or even next year. Wong’s ascent puts to rest a rare period of ...