Presume not that China is the thing it was. That’s certainly the message Premier Li Keqiang intends to convey with his promise to cut levies on imports. Almost simultaneously, Bloomberg News reported that the Trump administration will impose tariffs on as much as $60 billion of Chinese products as soon as this week. Have the world’s great protectionist and its ...

It’s now safe to say that the US economy is in a boom. Small business leaders are saying it. Measures of business optimism, tracked by the National Federation of Independent Business, are at all-time highs. These heady survey measures haven’t yet been matched by hard data, but the hard numbers are looking good too. Business investment as a percent of ...

Imagine a world in which the Japanese currency strengthens past the psychologically important level of 100 yen per dollar. It wouldn’t be so bad. With Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s approval rating edging toward July’s low, traders are doing a U-turn on their yen bets. Hedge funds are now in favour of a stronger Japanese currency for the first time since ...