It’s hard these days to muster much interest in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Locked for years in rounds of negotiations leading nowhere, the body seems to have outlived its usefulness. Another big gathering of trade ministers ended in deadlock in Buenos Aires last week. You might wonder: Why bother? The answer is that liberal trade, second only to capitalism, …

In 2006 the Chinese government allowed Google to establish Google.cn for Chinese internet users. In return, Google agreed to scrub results of content that the government found objectionable. The deal held until 2010, when Google decided it could no longer agree to such terms. Within hours, the site was blocked and Google’s search business on the mainland was dead. The …

Until now, the surge in cryptocurrency markets has been a sideshow to the financial markets or the real economy. Prices have gone up a lot for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and it’s fun to joke about things with names like Cardano and Monero going up a lot in value, but if it were to all go up in smoke tomorrow, …