Opinion

The European Commission tentatively opened the door to a plan by 10 member states, including Germany, France, Italy and Spain, to hit multinational tech companies with a turnover tax to compensate for their avoidance schemes. A new proposal presented by European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis allows for such stop-gap measures while it works with members states on a better, ...

Before Obamacare, state governments were the chief regulators of health insurance. Obamacare put the federal government in that role. The latest Republican health-care bill, sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy and others, would partially reverse that shift in authority. It would also give states the ability to allocate a lot of federal health-care dollars as they wish. The fact ...

What if your car could keep you out of an accident by knowing what was coming around the corner? No, I’m not just telling you what you already know about self-driving cars. Most of the self-driving prototypes we’re familiar with rely on sensors, which have limited range and can’t see past obstacles. That’s enough to prevent a lot of accidents—but ...

Driverless vehicles may not be all that they’re cracked up to be. Indeed, they may be harmful to our collective security and well-being. Unless you’ve been vacationing on Saturn, you know that driverless vehicles are the next Big Thing. Almost every major car company (General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes) has a program, often in cooperation with tech firms. A few ...

India’s digital push has got its timing all wrong. Yes Bank Ltd., one of the nation’s fastest-growing lenders, has cut 12 percent of its workforce, mostly salespeople. When Reliance Industries Ltd., controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, starts a new bank soon, it won’t have any branches. According to BloombergQuint, shop attendants that sell its phones will double as bankers. It ...

Where in the world can you get more than 11 percent from bonds since June and 41 percent from bank stocks this year, with inflation evaporating as the gross domestic product and currency strengthen? That would be Argentina, a financial integrity scofflaw for most of the past century, now bringing a bonanza to global investors. Since he was elected president ...

If there’s a symbol of the breadth of the euro zone’s recovery, it’s Portugal. In 2011, it had to accept an international bailout on punishing terms. Today, three years after graduating from that program, growth and confidence have returned. As if to mark the achievement, S&P Global Ratings just raised Portugal’s sovereign rating to investment grade. This success is real—but ...

Last week, the Commercial Aviation Corp. of China Ltd. (Comac) announced that the C919, China’s first homemade large passenger jet, had chalked up its 730th pre-order. Those numbers won’t necessarily make the Boeing Co. or Airbus SE quake; Boeing estimates Chinese airlines alone will require 5,420 new single-aisle planes by 2036. Ultimately, though, they could herald the end of global ...

As Congress factors in Senator John McCain’s refusal to back, for now, the latest scrupulously unvetted legislation to scramble the American health-care system, the gamey smell of states’ rights still lingers in the air. “Instead of a Washington-knows-best approach like Obamacare, our legislation empowers those closest to the health-care needs of their communities to provide solutions,” said Republican Senator Lindsey ...

The sour faces of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s allies after the first exit poll results for the federal election were announced on Sunday night will prompt much talk of a Pyrrhic victory for Merkel. But the outcome of Sunday’s election could be good both for her and for German democracy: It has clarified the options for the next governing coalition, ...