Bloomberg Angela Merkel is feeling pressure from her chosen successor to quit as German chancellor after this month’s elections for the European parliament, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. With Merkel’s Christian Democrats expected to lose ground in the May 26 vote, their leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, sent a message to Merkel urging her to resign and called ...

Bloomberg Five years ago, Rahul Gandhi, scion of one of the world’s most famous political dynasties, stood with his mother by his side, trying to explain why his Indian National Congress had suffered the worst defeat in its history. Rival Bharatiya Janata Party had won a landslide and crowned Narendra Modi prime minister. For much of India’s 2014 elections, political ...

Briefly suspending their warnings about the rising tide of socialism, a large majority of Senate Republicans recently joined with almost all their Democratic colleagues in affirming the essence of socialism, which is government allocation of capital. The Senate’s revival of the Export-Import Bank is a redundant reminder that the rhetorical discord between the parties exaggerates their actual differences. The Ex-Im ...

Like a practitioner of the Japanese art of Kabuki, Emmanuel Macron’s administration is going through some elaborate dance steps to try to shape the future of the Renault-Nissan carmaking alliance. The French president wants to protect the jobs of his citizens, as well as taxpayer money and France’s credibility as an industrial investor. It’s been an incredibly clumsy performance. France ...

Persistent macroeconomic struggles and changing winds of domestic regulation have thrown plenty of curveballs at China’s top two technology companies, Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Yet both of them managed to offer promising signs for investors willing to take the time to dig into the numbers. The common thread for both was the performance of relatively new ...

President Trump’s trade fight with China has been commanding headlines and the attention of financial markets — but don’t forget that another trade dispute is simmering alongside. The US has threatened to impose new tariffs on cars imported from the European Union (EU), and the EU has prepared a list of imports from the US that will face higher tariffs ...

One of the most striking facts of today’s world is that young people do not seem to worry very much about nuclear war. Climate change is by far the larger concern, while nuclear war is seen as a threat of the past. As Chapin Boyer, who is in his late 20s, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists a ...

Prospects that the trade war could rip apart the global auto industry are scary, perhaps even for President Donald Trump. Good thing it could just turn out to be bluster. Toning down his rhetoric, Trump is expected to give the European Union (EU) and Japan 180 days to agree to a deal that restricts the US’s imports of autos and ...

Think about extravagant campaign promises, and the words “policy review” don’t exactly leap to mind. And yet, in the steady-as-she-goes world of central bankers, Olli Rehn’s call for a comprehensive rethink of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) objectives has galvanised the race to succeed Mario Draghi. The ECB president steps down at the end of October and Rehn, governor of ...

Bloomberg Electric vehicles may be less prone to catch fire than gas guzzlers, but recent blazes involving Tesla Inc and NIO Inc cars in Greater China are prompting the industry to take steps to alleviate concerns from potential customers in the sector’s biggest market. Worries heightened after reports emerged of a fire involving a Tesla in a Hong Kong parking ...