Bloomberg A global tariff tit-for-tat could boost China’s $12 trillion economy and hurt the US expansion, according to European Central Bank research. The conclusions challenge President Donald Trump’s assertions that trade wars are “good, and easy to win.” They also counter the argument that China has more to lose from a spat with its main trading partner because of its ...

Bloomberg Daimler AG accelerated a management transition, naming development head Ola Kallenius to replace CEO Dieter Zetsche ahead of schedule as the German carmaker confronts jarring changes in the automotive industry. Kallenius, the first non-German to take the helm of Daimler, will become CEO in 2019, Daimler said in a statement. The 49-year-old Swede was already the heir apparent to ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc.’s human resources boss emailed with Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk about offering employees promotions that could prevent them from continuing their advocacy for unionisation. “I saw it as positive they get involved in something they were criticising,” Gaby Toledano, who joined Tesla as “chief people officer” in May 2017 testified in a National Labor Relations Board hearing ...

This year’s sell-off in emerging-markets assets has abated in recent weeks and valuations are tempting, but it’s too soon to say things have bottomed. The key to any rebound is China and India, two economies where the outlook has deteriorated in recent weeks. The relative size of their economies — together they accounted for more than 25 percent of global ...

Property bubbles have a habit of ignoring the fundamentals of having a roof over your head. The UK’s real-estate boom of the past decade was driven — especially in London — by government subsidies for buyers, cheap mortgages, and a fixation among investors that prices never go down. The less affordable homes became, the more they were sought after. It ...

Mark Zuckerberg is starting to suck Facebook Inc.’s eponymous product dry as far as rapid growth is concerned. Next target: Instagram. That might explain the departure of Instagram co-founders. Six years after Zuckerberg acquired their then 13-person startup for $715 million, the photo-sharing app has become Facebook’s most important source of growth. Zuckerberg has subsequently assumed a more hands-on role, ...

The potential costs of climate change, already the subject of heated debate, may actually be understated. It’s not just the potential disruptions to weather systems, agriculture and coastal cities; it’s that we may respond to those problems in stupid and destructive ways. As the philosopher and cartoon character Pogo said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Consider ...

Karl Marx defined the proletariat as labourers “unencumbered by any means of production” who were increasingly impoverished by the rise of machines. In that classic form, Marx’s favourite class doesn’t really exist in the rich world today, except in the so-called gig economy. Reports from the International Labour Organization and the JPMorgan Chase Institute describe the plight of different kinds ...

Better late than never. Tesco Plc has finally revealed Jack’s, its new store format to take on the might of the German discounters, Aldi and Lidl. Tesco should have made this move when the no-frills supermarkets started winning significant market share a few years ago. And cut-price chain B&M European Value Retail SA is expanding aggressively, and increasing its food ...

While flying last week to a conference in Reykjavík, it dawned on me that I knew almost nothing about Iceland. What little understanding I had was based on Michael Lewis’ epic tale of the nation’s financial collapse in Vanity Fair magazine entitled, “Wall Street on the Tundra.” His 10,000-word missive is a Norse saga of its own. Other Icelandic literature ...