President Donald J Trump recently wrapped up a three-week whirlwind of summitry, meeting with the leaders of Japan, France and Germany. If his visitors found the experience bewildering, who can blame them? In the past few months the president has repudiated much of what the US once believed about international relations. He’s advocated trade war as an instrument of policy. And ...

I spent the last couple of days at F8, Facebook’s annual tent revival for developers. I’ve consistently found F8 to be the place where Facebook gives the clearest elucidation of how the company sees itself and what it wants to be. This year, Facebook set its renewed mission of connecting people, but this goal comes with a conundrum. CEO Mark ...

Nissan Motor Co.’s jaw-dropping plunge in US car sales shouldn’t be a surprise. The Japanese automaker had it coming all along. Led by industry rainmaker Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s deliveries in North America declined 28 percent in April. And it wasn’t just one particular make. Sales of almost every model of car and truck slipped, including the high-end Infiniti brand. Japan’s ...

It is generally accepted in economics that financial variables tend to adjust more rapidly than real and policy variables. This seems to be the case this year with the three major transitions that are critical to the longer-term well-being of the global economy and markets. While this process is ongoing, policy makers would be well advised to put these changes ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wants the federal government to guarantee a job for every American willing and able to work. The proposal sounds compassionate and enlightened, but in practice, it would almost certainly be a disaster. The fact that it’s taken seriously is evidence that many Democrats, like Republicans before them, embrace loony economic agendas that are more public-relations gestures ...

It was only a decade ago that Nokia OYJ’s smartphone factory near Chennai was seen as the prototype solution for India’s chronic problem of too few women in the workforce. That unit, which at peak production boasted 8,000 permanent employees — 72 percent of whom were women – got left out of a global sale of the Finnish company’s mobile ...

The disingenuous way companies are attempting to comply with the letter, not the spirit, of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation is only part of the problem with the new privacy rule, which goes into effect May 25. For publishers already forced to accept Google’s near monopoly on programmatic advertising on their sites, the new regulation could make things ...

Bloomberg Two of the biggest US banks, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Wells Fargo & Co, are on the brink of piling into credit-card lending, seeking a share of the $183 billion in fees and interest tied to the product. Goldman Sachs is weighing the move as part of a push into consumer finance with its Marcus online lender, Chief ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BoE) will probably keep interest rates unchanged this week after an economic roller coaster that saw market bets on an increase flip from near-guaranteed to almost no chance. A majority of the nine Monetary Policy Committee members will vote to maintain a 0.5 percent benchmark on Thursday, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Governor ...

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve’s gradual push towards higher interest rates shouldn’t be blamed for any roiling of emerging market economies, which are well placed to navigate the tightening of US monetary policy, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said. In a speech that argued US decision-making isn’t the major determinant of flows of capital into developing economies, Powell said the influence of ...