If you’re surprised that last week’s trade negotiations between the US and China achieved little, take a look at the laundry list of demands the White House foisted on Beijing. President Donald Trump wants China to slash the trade deficit; end cyber theft of US technology; eliminate regulations impeding access for American companies; cease subsidizing new high-tech industries; and more. ...

India has millions of military personnel, billions of dollars in arms spending and grave threats on its borders, yet the nation doesn’t make its own fighter jets and anti-tank missiles. Is that a massive opportunity for investors? Not so fast. India has been striving toward defense self-sufficiency since the 1960s. The country has one of the world’s largest military budgets ...

Nestle SA may have found the right brew for perking up its US coffee business. The consumer-goods giant recently announced a $7.2 billion deal with Starbucks Corp. that allows it to market, sell and distribute the Seattle-based company’s packaged coffees and teas. It’s just the latest in a string of deals orchestrated by Nestle CEO Mark Schneider, who has been ...

This month, the European Union will embark on an expansive effort to give people more control over their data online. Known as the General Data Protection Regulation, it’s ambitious, well-intentioned and largely wrongheaded. As it comes into force, Europe should be mindful of unintended consequences — and open to change when things go wrong. No one could say the GDPR ...

One of the scariest ideas in the world is the possibility that technological progress is petering out. Without it, there can be no long-run economic expansion or ongoing improvement in the human condition. Modern societies and economies are built on the assumption of growth, but even if they were to be reorganized to adapt to a static world, it could ...

Britain’s supermarket industry is in upheaval. And the planet’s retail giant may yet make its mark. Amazon.com Inc. tried to open talks to buy Waitrose last year, according to the Sunday Times. The John Lewis Partnership, which owns the grocer known for its posh clientele, denied that an approach had been made, while Amazon declined to comment. This odd couple ...

I’ve been doing some reporting in the Caribbean and elsewhere abroad recently, which led me to begin using WhatsApp for the first time. In large swaths of the world, people use WhatsApp as their primary texting tool: It’s free, it’s fast, and you can send photos, videos and audio as well as text. And you can set up a chat ...

Bloomberg International politics are looming large over the race among global investment banks to secure coveted permits for taking majority stakes in Chinese securities joint ventures. Switzerland’s UBS Group AG and Nomura Holdings Inc. of Japan in the past week became the first to apply for permission to buy 51 percent stakes in local securities JVs. Both banks acted after ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is considering a sweeping restructuring in the US that could result in the firm cutting about 20 percent of staff in the region, according to people briefed on the matter. The bank is nearing a decision and the final reductions may end up lower, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the ...

Bloomberg The Irish state received a payment outstripping last year’s 1.8 billion euros ($2.1 billion) from the country’s Central Bank, according to a person familiar with the matter. The payment flowed from the Central Bank’s earnings for 2017, said the person who asked not to be named as the information is private. Details of the latest payment will be published ...