Opinion

  James Gibney Donald Trump’s recent Trademaggedon speech has unleashed a lot of “elite” spluttering. He doesn’t understand economics! He gets his facts wrong! His remedies are wildly unrealistic and counterproductive! Which is all true. But just as important was one point where he got some of his facts right, because it highlights the difficulty of talking straight about trade ...

  WASHINGTON Since its unfortunate “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union, Britain has experienced a tragi-comic round of backstabbing, foot-dragging and second-guessing. Europe, meanwhile has mostly behaved with admirable good sense. The Europeans seem to understand that the Brexit vote is a wake-up call about dissatisfaction with the EU that’s nearly as widespread on the continent as it is ...

  With Brexit impact hanging over Europe, European finance ministers’ warnings over adverse economic impact on the EU, were also loaded with a political sarcasm that the UK, which voted to leave at its own choice, risks becoming a “Little Britain” in the referendum’s aftermath. This is a clear signal to Scotland and North Ireland to remain in the EU. ...

  Mark Whitehouse U.S. job growth rebounded in June from a brief slump that had many concerned about the outlook for the economy. The crucial question now: How long can it go on? The employment report for June suggests that U.S. employers were doing well in the weeks before Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. The Labor Department’s establishment ...

One of the U.S.’s biggest economic challenges is the slump in productivity. After climbing steadily for many decades, productivity has slowed dramatically since 2011: Productivity is the key to long-term prosperity. It represents a hard ceiling on the amount of valuable things that a society is able to produce. If productivity flatlines, it means that the pie isn’t growing, and ...

  Prime Minister Shinzo Abe surprised no one when he led his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to victory in the Upper House elections on July 10. His party won 56 seats, and together with the Sokka Gakai-backed Komeito party, which won 14 seats, the Osaka Ishin no Kai, which won seven seats, and the Party for Japanese Kokoro, which did ...

  While some have been shocked by the result of the British referendum to decide whether the state either remains or leaves the European Union, all can agree that what has been even more surprising and discomforting have been both the open displays of xenophobia and the spike in hate crimes against migrants and minorities. The Leave campaign leading to ...

  ST. LOUIS America’s economy has now slouched into the eighth year of a recovery that demonstrates how much we have defined recovery down. The idea that essentially zero interest rates are, after seven and a half years, stimulating the economy “strains credulity,” says James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. But last month he and ...

  The world’s focus will be on Beijing rather than The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), the world’s oldest international arbitration tribunal, set to issue a written decision on Tuesday after the Philippines challenged China’s claim over much of the strategic waterway, China South Sea, in 2013. In an anticipation of the verdict, China has vowed it would not comply ...

  Albert R. Hunt Years ago, the conservative activist Grover Norquist was the guest speaker in a class I teach at the University of Pennsylvania. “Older people are the base of the Democratic Party,” he told the class of predominantly liberal Ivy League students. “Do you know what they do every day? Die.” Ironically, Norquist’s argument, that Democrats were on ...