Opinion

The North Korean nuclear threat is a “hinge” moment for the US and China, and for the new international order both nations say they want. If Washington and Beijing manage to stay together in dealing with Pyongyang, the door opens on a new era in which China will play a larger and more responsible role in global affairs, commensurate with ...

President Donald Trump endorsed a plan to change the way the US immigration system operates. Half of the plan is very good. The other half is bad and counterproductive. The plan, known as the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment (RAISE) Act, was developed by Republican senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. It would do two ...

It’s customary for companies reporting a horror-show result to blame the general trading environment, rather than anything within control of management. Commodities trader Noble Group Ltd. is no exception. In declaring that it had been holed below the waterline with a $1.9 billion net loss over the June quarter, the company declared the problem was not with the crew, but ...

Ten years after risky mortgages helped spark a global financial crisis, lenders and policymakers have lost none of their talent for helping people make big-ticket purchases they couldn’t otherwise afford. True, 100 percent mortgages are rare now, let alone the 125 percent loan-to-value deals offered by Northern Rock. Fibbing about your income to get a loan is more difficult, though ...

The Trump administration has taken on three ambitious statistical projects: tracking down cases of voter registration fraud, identifying racism in college admissions and developing an algorithm for “extreme vetting” of visa applications. These would all be very tricky even for a trained professional. I doubt the president’s people are up to the task. Let’s start with voter fraud. It’s actually ...

Latin America, a region maligned by recent crises that nonetheless boasts a $4.6 trillion economy, needs urgent policy shifts to bring growth rates back to where they were during years of high commodity prices. Time is running out because its demographic advantage — when active workers outnumber retirees — will peak in 2020, according to a report from the Inter-American ...

Japan is the graveyard of economic theories. The country has had ultralow interest rates and run huge government deficits for decades, with no sign of the inflation that many economists assume would be the natural result. Now, after years of trying almost every trick in the book to reflate the economy, the Bank of Japan is finally bowing to the ...

No one is working harder for the impeachment of Donald Trump than Donald Trump. If we have learned anything about this president, it is that he has a compulsion to be the center of attention. He can’t bear being out of the limelight and will say almost anything—no matter how offensive, outrageous or dishonest it strikes millions of Americans—to keep ...

With Donald Trump’s approval ratings in the dumps, it’s no surprise that early maneuvering for the 2020 Democratic nomination is already fairly visible. Ed Kilgore assesses the field as some of the longer of the long shots get ready for visits to Iowa, and he raises the question of whether a very large field will be vulnerable to the kind ...

President Jacob Zuma has survived yet another attempt to oust him, beating back a no-confidence vote in South Africa’s parliament. A Pyrrhic victory for Zuma’s supporters in the ruling African National Congress, the outcome is a clear loss for the rest of the country. Tuesday’s vote was instigated by the opposition last spring, after Zuma fired his respected finance minister, ...