The “gig economy” has become the cause celebre for people who think labor needs help from government in its struggle with capital. Politicians from the radical left and anti-establishment parties say the rise of casual work is a sign that work relationships are sliding back in time and that the state must step in to address this decline in standards.　John McDonnell, the UK Labour Party’s economics spokesman, says “zero-hour contracts” and the gig economy have produced workplace “insecurity not s

There has been an unexpected development in the US-China trade war. Chinese trade officials apparently offered a huge concession earlier this month: a promise to completely eliminate its trade surplus with the US by 2024. The offer was off the record, but it’s still a huge surprise, especially given the haphazard and clumsy way that President Donald Trump has chosen to fight his trade war.　Why is China making this proposal? One possibility is that the government is afraid that the trade war is h

The US push to “decouple” its economy from China’s is causing ripples in Europe. The Federation of German Industries, the most influential industrial lobby group, has proposed a vision for keeping Europe’s important economic relationship with China alive and preventing the country’s state-owned and state-supported firms from competing unfairly.　As President Donald Trump has intensified his war against the established rules of global trade, the European Union has increasingly found itself on the

On the morning of March 26, 2018, my colleague Yoolim Lee ordered a Grab ride in Singapore. Within hours, she was lying in hospital with a fractured vertebrae and a vertebral artery dissection.　Her story, published in the Jan. 19 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, is the result of what happens when a deeply personal incident collides with journalistic curiosity. Lee’s tale also brings to the fore something about the ride-hailing industry that’s been sitting in the subconscious of many executives

When Elon Musk broke ground on Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai earlier this month, he wasn’t just thinking about how many Teslas he’ll sell in China. He was thinking about how many he might be able to share.　Musk isn’t alone. Global automobile manufacturers are scrambling to develop services that will allow Chinese car owners to rent out their vehicles when they’re not driving them. According to one recent analysis, such services could hire out as many as 2 million cars in 2020, up from roughly

Almost every major new economic initiative proposed by Democrats -- the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, debt-free college -- has a common feature: Unlike most current social programs, it would benefit younger Americans at the expense of older Americans.Since the New Deal, America’s social insurance programs have primarily transferred resources from the relatively young to the old. Social Security was designed as a program to support those unable to work, but over time its spending came to be d

The world’s tech police have the opportunity to succeed in televisions where they initially failed with the rest of the connected world, and ensure that users retain a firm grasp on their data.Smart televisions are nothing new. Nor is the shift in the platform wars, where tech firms duke it out for primacy of their operating systems, from smartphones to the television set. But the fact that Amazon.com Inc. is developing its own smart TV indicates that there’s enough value in the user data to off

It was both a historic vote and a decisive defeat for the government. But while it was called a “meaningful vote,” parliament’s verdict on Theresa May’s Brexit deal Tuesday was actually anything but.Tuesday’s ballot was all about tactics; not one MP thought it would decide anything. As the prime minister noted herself afterward, it makes clear what parliament doesn’t want, but not what alternative can garner a majority among lawmakers. As such, it has left all factions even more entrenched.Remai

China’s economy is slowing. The downturn may be the result of recent events -- the trade war with the US, or retrenchment in China’s real estate and infrastructure sectors. But it may also be the latest manifestation of a trend that began a decade ago. And it may signal that China’s entire system of authoritarian state capitalism is less effective than many had believed.Recent data suggest that consumption is falling, indicating rocky times ahead:But China’s woes go far beyond the current busine

Does President Donald Trump have the legal authority to declare a national emergency, and order the military to build a wall between Mexico and the United States?We are dealing with a novel question here, which means that any judgment has to have a degree of tentativeness. But the best answer appears to be no.Outside of the most extraordinary circumstances, the US Constitution does not give the president “emergency power.” If he wants to declare a national emergency -- to build a wall, to respon

The ambition of China hawks in the Trump administration is to maintain American dominance by halting China’s economic rise. It’s strange that President Xi Jinping appears to be working toward the same end.The risk for any economy approaching China’s level of development is that it gets ensnared in the middle-income trap. Once the low-hanging fruits of urbanization and industrialization have been plucked, countries tend to get stuck in second gear.Latin America, the former Soviet Union and the la

It was mendacious, petty, deeply cynical and full of contradictions -- and just possibly the most honest expression of a US administration’s policy in the Middle East by a top American official.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech in Cairo will win no hearts and change no minds among his imagined audience, the Arab world. Most Arabs will have paid it no heed at all, since Pompeo is widely regarded as having no “wasta” (connection or influence) on the Trump administration’s Middle East poli

To claim we’ve already been to the moon is like spending a day each in Iowa, Arizona, Rhode Island and maybe Western Pennsylvania and saying you’ve already been to Earth. There’s a lot more to see on the moon -- including the whole far side, the half that’s perpetually turned away from us. That’s one reason for the excitement behind the Chinese-led mission Chang’e-4, which landed in this unexplored region recently.　Images from lunar orbit show the geology there is strikingly different from the s

Ten years ago, President Barack Obama traveled to Cairo to open a new dialogue with the world’s Muslims. On Thursday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Cairo to offer a rebuttal.　Some of his points are correct. It’s true that Obama in his first term was too sanguine about political Islam. In 2009 -- two years before the revolution that toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- Obama invited members of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech. Obama wrongly assessed the prospects for

French President Emmanuel Macron’s handouts to “yellow vest” protesters have damped the demonstrators’ fervor somewhat but failed to stop the regular eruptions of violence, so now Macron and his government have decided to wield a heavier stick. The new rules being proposed ought to raise some eyebrows: They’re tougher than the norms Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime uses to suppress political opposition.　The shift from a conciliatory tone toward law and order began with Macron’s New Year

Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative a bold infrastructure vision, or a slush fund? The question is becoming more pressing.　Chinese officials offered to help bail out state-owned 1Malaysia Development, kill off investigations into alleged corruption at the fund, and spy on journalists looking into it in exchange for stakes in Belt-and-Road railway and pipeline projects in Malaysia, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. If proven, that would offer the clearest link yet between the 1MDB scandal

One of the most common arguments against President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Syria is that it will strengthen Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was to leave Tuesday for a weeklong tour of the Middle East, makes an interesting case for why that isn’t so.　Trump himself gave his critics ammunition at a cabinet meeting last week, when he observed that Iran already “can do what they want” in Syria. But his comment was merely descriptive, not a prediction of what will

The damage caused by US President Donald Trump’s trade fight with China has spread farther and faster than many expected. Factories in China and the US have seen orders slump. American farmers are hurting. A collapse in Chinese demand for iPhones knocked nearly $75 billion off Apple’s market cap in a single day. Slower growth just prompted China’s central bank to ease monetary policy, and, despite last week’s encouraging news on US jobs, the Fed is having second thoughts about its plan to normal

US President Donald Trump in a meeting with congressional Democrats on Friday said he was prepared for the partial government shutdown to continue for months -- or even years -- if he doesn’t get the money he wants for a wall along the Mexican border. It’s not hard to see how that prediction comes true. Both sides have framed the issue such that a victory for one side on funding a border wall entails defeat for the other. Neither side has much incentive to compromise.　Suppose Trump is right. The

In cyberspace, conflict is the norm when it comes to nation-states. Russia’s malware shows up on US power grids, and its online trolls try to influence elections. China, meanwhile, steals the personal data and intellectual property of leading American corporations. The US, for its part, has its hackers on a war footing.　So it may seem the prospects for dialogue are slim. Yet this is exactly what happened last month in Moscow among former and current officials from China, Russia and the US. The o