Shinzo Abe’s recent promise of $30 billion in financing to African countries over the next three years shouldn’t have come as a great surprise. Quietly, over decades, Japan has become the leading financier of growth-supporting infrastructure across large swathes of the developing world. Perhaps too quietly. In fact, few people outside the country appreciate the scope of Japan’s overseas development …

  Trade agreements are stalled or collapsing. Brexit won. World trade volume is slowing down. Has globalization hit a wall? Not exactly. Globalization isn’t so much slowing as it is taking new forms. The most potent form of globalization today is occurring inside nations, notably China and India. Globalization typically is defined as the movement of goods, services, ideas, labor …

  The European Union has never been homogeneous, but recent policy clashes and particularly the immigration issue are making its split into three sub-blocs — the North, the South and the East — increasingly visible. Two strongmen, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling party, make no secret of trying to create an axis for …