There’s ugly symbolism in the deadly accident that took place in Tempe, Arizona, late on Sunday evening. A self-driving Volvo operated by Uber ran over Elaine Herzberg, 49, as the apparently homeless woman pushed a bicycle loaded with plastic bags into the street.　Even though Tempe police are not inclined at this point to blame the Uber vehicle -- Herzberg apparently stepped into the road suddenly from the shadows -- optics such as these are likely to set back the autonomous vehicle industry. An

President Vladimir Putin’s re-election Sunday to a fourth six-year term comes amid a feeling both in the West and in Moscow that he is ascendant as a global leader and that Russia has re-emerged as a global superpower. However, if one scratches beneath the surface of these assertions, it’s clear that Putin faces a growing number of complex challenges that are likely to deepen in the coming months and gradually erode his political momentum. Here are a few that will be the most difficult for him t

President Donald Trump knows little history. But he can read a short take, so someone should slip him a copy of Dwight Eisenhower’s brief note of June 5, 1944, on the eve of the largest seaborne assault in history, D-Day, with World War II at stake.　“The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do,” the supreme allied commander wrote in a message he intended to deliver only if the Normandy invasion failed. “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is

Facebook is being hammered for allowing data firm Cambridge Analytica to acquire 50 million user profiles in the US, which it may or may not have used to help the Trump campaign. But the outrage misses the target: There’s nothing Cambridge Analytica could have done that Facebook itself doesn’t offer political clients.　Here, in a nutshell, is the scandal. In 2014, Aleksandr Kogan, an academic of Russian origin at Cambridge University in the UK, built a Facebook app that paid hundreds of thousands

Suppose President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is random. I mean really random: Like random luck, designed only in so far as to fluctuate wildly between different, opposing strategic views.　In this thought experiment, it’s not a bug but a feature that the US is pulling away from a nuclear nonproliferation agreement with Iran even as it seeks to negotiate one with North Korea. Similarly, it’s an intentional accident that Trump might replace the realist national security adviser H.R. McMaster wit

There are many good economic reasons why President Donald Trump is wrong to obsess over the US trade deficit with China. One is that this bilateral deficit isn’t as severe as he thinks -- and, in any case, the structural factors that caused the imbalance in the first place are changing. Before launching a US-China trade war, the White House needs a more accurate picture of how the world, in fact, trades.　America’s goods deficit with China indeed hit a record level last year -- around $375 billio

American farms are being pinched by a tightening labor market, a long decline in the number of undocumented migrants and more aggressive immigration enforcement in the nation’s interior.　“All types of farms and ranches are facing labor shortages, but the problem is critical in the fruit and vegetable sector where farmers are more dependent on hand-harvesting,” said Zippy Duvall, the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, in an email. “Even with all the mechanization and innovation tha

Greece’s planned August exit from its third European Stability Mechanism bailout has triggered investor optimism. Its July 2017 bond issuance, the first in three years, was oversubscribed, as were subsequent issuances in February of this year. And yet financial investors should curb their optimism. Greece’s return to the markets, and its economic recovery, are likely to be a bumpy and slow -- especially if it continues to delay key reforms.　Greece’s growth appears to have stabilized at a low rat

It makes sense to ask why the Trump administration was given almost a year to decide whether aluminum and steel imports were threats to national security, yet it took only 90 days for the president to act on that decision. But three months was ample time to peruse or even skim through some of the hundreds of pages on global trade to come to a constructive conclusion. Apparently, President Donald Trump couldn’t be bothered. Instead, on March 1, well before the mid-April deadline, he jumped the gu

Opaque though China’s system of government may be to outsiders, there’s wide agreement that the initiatives announced in recent days are no ordinary course correction. President Xi Jinping has brought more levers of power under his control and is moving methodically to erase the distinction between the Communist Party and the state.　It’s a bold new direction, as Xi himself declares. His ambitions are far-reaching. What does his project mean for China’s prospects, and for the world?　Xi’s strategy

Some of the most spectacularly wrong predictions in history have been made by those who claim that overpopulation is going to swamp the planet. Thomas Malthus, a British economist writing in the late 1700s, is the most famous of these. Extrapolating past trends into the future, he predicted that population growth would inevitably swamp available food resources, leading to mass starvation. That didn’t happen -- we continued to develop new technologies that let us stay ahead of the reaper.　In 1968

The idea of a European “digital tax” on tech revenues just won’t go away. Next week, the European Commission will formally propose the levy, and though it faces stiff opposition from low-tax countries such as Ireland and Luxembourg, the proposal isn’t necessarily doomed.　Last fall, the European Union’s largest continental economies -- Germany, France, Spain and Italy -- came out in favor of the turnover levy they dubbed an “equalization tax.” According to EU data, the effective corporate tax bur

Perhaps the only surprising thing about Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s firing was the brutal and sudden nature of the ejection. No meeting, not even a phone call, just a tweet.While many of Tuesday’s hot takes focused on Tillerson’s missteps, his departure is not really about him, of course. He’s a proven global leader who was hugely successful in a long career at Exxon, and was being rightly lauded by people like former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and former Secretary of State Condoleezz

President Donald Trump’s possible meeting with Kim Jong-un to discuss North Korean nuclear weapons is considered a fairly unpredictable event. It’s worth a look at how an economist might use game theory to think about such a summit, if only to explain why there is more room for things to go wrong than to get better.Game theorists often approach a problem by first considering where a series of strategies might end up, and then work backwards to understand current choices. When it comes to North K

As far as firings under President Donald Trump go, Rex Tillerson’s is not the most humiliating. That dishonor would have to go to former chief of staff, Reince Priebus. He learned he was fired through three Trump tweets and soon after was decoupled from the president’s motorcade.But Tillerson’s departure is nonetheless a slap in the face to a former CEO who advised and quarreled with a man who used to play one on TV. As Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Steve Goldstein said in a state

China is hoping to become the Detroit of the battery-powered electric vehicle industry. Sales of electric vehicles are expected to reach 1 million this year alone, and the government has big plans for expansion. But this welcome trend comes with a perplexing side effect: China is now using up more lithium-ion batteries than anywhere else in the world. What to do with them?Throwing those batteries away could be environmentally hazardous. Recycling them, meanwhile, turns out not to be very profita

The #MeToo movement has finally reached Russia. Unfortunately, it‘s sad and astonishing for the women involved and for anyone who supports them. Russia’s current atmosphere is conducive to all sorts of power abuses, and the scandal in its parliament proves that nothing‘s about to change.　On Feb. 22, the anti-Kremlin TVRain channel reported that Leonid Slutsky, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Russian parliament’s lower house, was being accused of making crude passes at female journal

The rapid about-face in relations between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, from one marked by insults and invective to the verge of what is billed as an historic face-to-face meeting, is welcome (assuming it actually happens).Success would be in the whole world’s interest. Trump always wants a win. Kim wants punishing economic sanctions lifted and guarantees of long-term survival. South Korea wants to avoid a cataclysmic conflict on the Korean Peninsula. So do Chi

The next few episodes of the Donald Trump show should be riveting. Last week, the South Korean national security adviser announced North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un invited Trump to meet to negotiate his nuclear weapons. The “dotard” may face off against “little rocket man” face-to-face. Stay tuned.　If indeed the unprecedented meeting comes to pass, it will be historic. That does not mean though that it will be wise. And unless Trump comes to these talks to negotiate the terms of Kim Jong-un’s

US President Donald Trump’s plans for a trade war aren’t ostensibly focused on Europe, but Trump himself appears to think they are. He said on Tuesday that “the European Union has been particularly tough on the United States,” making it “almost impossible for us to do business with them.” Fact-checking Trump on this is pointless, but it’s worth pointing out that the US is on the verge of poisoning its favorite well for no obvious reason.　There is talk that Canada and Mexico could be excluded fro