Donald Trump is trying to take on the single most globalized industry -- and China. But the world’s largest car market won’t budge.　Beijing reduced duties on autos July 1, just before the imposition Friday of US tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods. China’s carmakers, like its consumers, are the least vulnerable to external forces compared with counterparts elsewhere. The tariffs with which Trump is intimidating the auto industry will, on the other hand, wipe out a swath of bottom lines, burn

Global worries over trade wars, central bank rate hikes and geopolitical instability have hammered emerging-market debt in recent months. The fact is, over the past decade, many developing and low-income countries have simply borrowed too much. They borrowed from the markets, from banks and from other countries. In particular, they borrowed from China, which has averaged more than $100 billion in annual financing commitments since 2010. 　Those bills are now coming due. As one of the largest prov

The landslide victory of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico’s presidential elections comes two months after the startling return to power in Malaysia of Mahathir Mohamad and, on a smaller scale, a week after the wholly unexpected triumph in a New York Democratic primary of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old novice politician.　What’s strikingly common to the rise of Obrador, Mohamad, Ocasio-Cortez and many other disparate figures is their fervent support among young voters. Many youth tod

Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and one of the pioneers of the World Wide Web, once declared: The spread of computers and the internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do. Andreessen has since repudiated this declaration, and taken a more optimistic stance. But economists, a more pessimistic bunch, are taking the possibility of this sort of bifurcated future more seriously. As machine-learning technology enjoy

It will be months before a verdict is reached in the corruption case brought against ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is accused of siphoning money from a former unit of the state-owned 1MDB development fund. (He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.) But his arrest this week is more significant than many people outside the region may realize. It’s the first sign of something that modern Southeast Asia has till now lacked — accountability for the region’s top leaders.　 Since gaining

As the trade war between the US and China escalates, with President Donald Trump imposing tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports, both sides are trying to portray themselves as victims of an unconstrained unilateralist rival. They’re both wrong: This dispute is about something much bigger.　For many years, American foreign policy adopted a fairly strong pro-China stance. The US was a major proponent of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization and took no direct policy actions in respo

There’s a dog that hasn’t barked in the current round of trade tensions between the US and China: Despite the first direct tariffs coming into force Friday, the Chinese consumer has been on her best behavior.　That’s somewhat unusual if you consider Beijing’s most recent diplomatic spats with its trading partners.　 When relations with South Korea deteriorated last year over Seoul’s decision to deploy a missile shield, Chinese civil society went straight for the jugular.　Yang Bingyang, a former mo

The European Parliament’s rejection of new copyright rules shows how difficult it is for regulators to compel the tech industry to pay for content that it uses for free.　The parliament voted Thursday to send a draft Copyright Directive back to the drawing board; a new version will be debated in September. The decision is a disappointment for Paul McCartney, who had urged legislators to pass the measure. It also represents a missed opportunity for news organizations, which would have received a l

In the feverish run-up to conflict, it’s only natural the protagonists should be on the hunt for ways to justify their rash actions.　In the months preceding the 2003 Iraq war, that came in the form of the confected claims that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and trained al-Qaida operatives in how to use them.　 With a fresh set of tariff barriers this week set to ramp up tensions between China and the US, it’s now coming in a different form: A narrative that compromise with Beijin

Americans’ growing preoccupation with the culture wars has meant a greater focus on the two branches of government where these often symbolic battles are most fought and noticed: the presidency and the Supreme Court. A byproduct is the relative neglect of the third branch, Congress.　This has led to poor governance. Not long ago, the Republicans passed a tax reform bill, in part because they thought voters would like it. Six months later, the bill is losing popularity. The benefits of the bill ar

A Wall Street Journal analysis recently concluded that “more than 40 percent of households headed by people aged 55 through 70 lack sufficient resources to maintain their living standard in retirement.”　It isn’t easy to solve the problem for those already at retirement age, but behavioral economists, working at the border of economics and psychology, have a magic bullet for getting younger people to save more: make enrollment in retirement savings plans automatic. In 2006, Congress blessed this

The Singapore meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un made for a great propaganda film for North Korean TV, with swelling music, a swooning commentator and swanky pageantry. The planned summit between Trump and President Vladimir Putin won’t even produce that; it will be a pure waste of time for everyone involved.　The meeting, confirmed by Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, would serve two purposes: The US president loves playing the international statesman and Putin

Every French leader since the 1980s has been elected on a mandate to fight unemployment -- and failed. Whatever else he accomplishes, getting people into work is the one thing French President Emmanuel Macron will be judged on at the end of his term.　The Macron plan is basically a wish list of reforms that France’s senior technocratic elite has urged on its politicians for decades. The agenda involves a little bit of labor market deregulation and slight cuts to France’s extraordinarily high wage

If Amazon’s move to disrupt health care is going to make Americans any healthier, the improvement is most likely to take place in the business of getting prescription drugs to patients more reliably. For one thing, there’s plenty of room for improvement. Failure to take prescription drugs kills about 125,000 Americans a year, according to a recent review in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and this form of noncompliance costs the health care system $100 billion to $289 billion a year.　 PillPack

Last year, Corporate America was all about press releases announcing lofty US hiring plans. The new fad is to threaten the reverse.　 On Friday, General Motors joined Harley-Davidson and bourbon maker Brown-Forman in calling out the negative impact to their businesses from President Donald Trump’s effort to use national security as an excuse to slap tariffs on goods imported from US allies. GM said tariffs on imported vehicles and auto parts could lead it to employ fewer US workers and have less

US courts have long been reluctant to intervene in the admissions decisions of colleges and universities. In general, the law allows them to do whatever they want within this overarching framework:　- Racial discrimination is forbidden.　- An institution may not maintain a racial quota system, even if it is sincerely seeking to ensure the presence of adequate numbers of traditionally disadvantaged groups, including African-Americans.　- An institution may consider race as a “plus,” at least if it i

If an alien landed in Rome today, he would think Matteo Salvini was running Italy. The leader of the right-wing League has seized the center stage of Italian politics, even though he is merely deputy prime minister, interior minister and head of the junior party in its governing coalition.　Five Star, the League’s senior partner in the new populist administration, is entirely to blame for this. The movement has been outmaneuvered comprehensively since Italy’s government was formed three weeks ago

As one Trump administration trade policy backfires, another looks set to.　On Monday, Harley-Davidson said it would shift some production out of the US in order to mitigate the impact of European Union tariffs targeting its motorcycles. Those penalties -- which Harley-Davidson estimates may cost it as much as $100 million annually -- were in response to US levies on steel and aluminum imported from the EU. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department is reportedly planning to aim a bazooka at a Chinese tak

As Japanese investors flock to annual general meetings this week -- more than 400 of them on June 28 alone -- they’ll have new yardsticks by which to measure performance. The Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Financial Services Agency added two new recommendations to the corporate governance code this month: to re-evaluate complex cross-shareholdings and to push for greater diversity on boards, most notably by adding more women and non-Japanese directors. While the code doesn’t specify numerical targ

Japan, many people believe, is a country of rigid, traditional gender norms, where men work and women are homemakers. But this stereotype is passe. Despite the continued prevalence of traditional gender roles in television shows, Japanese culture has undergone a sea change -- most women now have jobs.　Japan isn’t alone. In recent years, female labor force participation has been rising across almost all industrialized countries. There’s at least one big exception, though -- the US.　The decline of