[Cass R Sunstein] When impeachment is mandatory

Suppose that within the next few months, it becomes clear that President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Does the House of Representatives have discretion to decide whether to impeach him? Or does the constitution require it to do so?The simplest answer, and the best, is that the constitution requires the House to do so.To avoid political bias, let’s bracket all questions associated with President Trump, put current events to one side, and assume that some future president commi

Dec. 13, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] EU is playing Trump just like it played Brexiters

The Trump administration has pulled out all the stops to attack the European Union. Realizing its relative weakness, the EU hasn’t tried a muscular response. Instead, it has used the same tactic as it did with Britain’s Brexiters.On Tuesday, the US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, accused Europe of disregarding all the goodwill built up since the Marshall Plan and of frustrating US efforts to redress the trade imbalance.“What we have done for Europe since the end of World War II speaks for

Dec. 13, 2018

[Kim Young-suck] Song of peace for 200th anniversary of ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’

On the Dec. 24, 1818, the Christmas carol “Silent Night, Holy Night” was created by two friends, Franz Xaver Gruber, an organist, and Rev. Joseph Mohr, a priest at the St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria. The song was first performed by the church choir with the accompaniment of a guitar at the Christmas Eve mass at the St. Nicholas Church.In December 1914, not long after the outbreak of World War I, the allied forces of the French and English armies fought against German armies day after

Dec. 12, 2018

[Letter to the Editor] Feminism debate a step forward

I disagree with San E’s priorities in regards to feminism, but it seems like a good amount of his opposition is based on misinterpretation. His initial release of “Feminist” is him playing a character, and much of his criticism is constructed as if those lyrics are a literal expression of his ideals. Instead, the track is a satire of men who pretend to be feminists and internally resent the movement. To me, it didn’t reveal much about his direct views on feminism. His subsequent releases “6.9 cm

Dec. 12, 2018

[Robert B. Reich] Tip for Tariff Man

“I am a Tariff Man,” Trump tweeted last week. “When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. ... We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.”　I’m sorry, Mr. President, but you got this wrong. Tariffs are paid by American consumers. About half the $200 billion worth of Chinese goods you’ve already put tariffs on come almost exclusively from China, which means American consumers are taking a

Dec. 12, 2018

[Jayati Ghosh] Political roots of falling wage growth

It’s now official: Workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1 percent in 2017, down from 1.8 percent in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.In the advanced G20 economies, average real wages grew by a mere 0.4 percent in 2017, compared with 1.7 percent growth in 2015. While real wages were up by 0.7 percent in the United States (v

Dec. 12, 2018

[Noah Smith] Huawei reveals real trade war with China

If you only scan the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US-China trade war is mainly about tariffs. After all, the president and trade-warrior-in-chief has called himself “Tariff Man.” And the tentative trade deal between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was mainly about tariffs, especially on items like automobiles.　But the startling arrest in Canada of a Chinese telecom company executive should wake people up to the fact that there’s a second US-Ch

Dec. 11, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Exit Merkel. Enter hope for centrism in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has been accused of killing German politics with her boa constrictor-like dominance and her contempt for electioneering fireworks. But on Friday, as she handed over the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union, it was clear that exciting political competition is alive even within the CDU, and that Germany’s next chancellor and Europe’s next de facto leader will be a star politician.　That star is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a Merkel disciple and chosen successor.　The

Dec. 11, 2018

[Ferdinando Giugliano] Greece drags itself back toward normality

As the cradle of democracy, Greece knows better than most countries what politics is all about. Yet, for the last eight years, any discussions between lawmakers from the left and right there have been overshadowed by the country’s economic collapse, and the string of rescue programs put together by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.Athens has been locked in permanent confrontation with its European partners, which culminated in the showdown of 2015 when Greece very nearly exited

Dec. 11, 2018

[Pankaj Mishra] Macron fans flames of illiberalism

In 2017, the election of Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker, as France’s president was almost unanimously seen in the business press as a sign that the tide of “populism” could be reversed.　It is true that this silver-tongued graduate of Sciences Po and Ecole Nationale d’Administration -- the nurseries of the French ruling elite -- had prevented a far-right demagogue from occupying the Elysee Palace. However, there was much in Macron’s pseudo-regal demeanor and fancy rhetoric -- which i

Dec. 10, 2018

[Anjani Trivedi] Huawei effect threatens China’s spy-tech champion

There goes the future of Chinese surveillance giant Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology.For months, the risk of sanctions or other penalties has been hanging over Hikvision, one of the world’s largest makers of security cameras and other spying equipment. In August, President Donald Trump signed a law that forbade US government agencies from buying surveillance products from Chinese firms including Hikvision, ZTE and Huawei Technologies. In September, the New York Times reported that the US wa

Dec. 10, 2018

[Alex Webb] If Europe can tax Google, so can everybody else

France and Germany have now reached a consensus on how to tax some of the Silicon Valley giants. America, the ball’s in your court. The two countries released a statement on Dec. 4 declaring their support for a 3 percent tax on digital ads, providing a breakthrough in European Union wrangling on how to deal with big tech. It’s essentially a levy on Facebook and Google parent Alphabet. The accord represents a softening of the French position, which had initially sought a broader tax on data. That

Dec. 10, 2018