[Justin Fendos] Trade war is opportunity

The US President Donald Trump appears set on having a trade war with China. With initial tariffs exchanged, White House rhetoric has made clear the goal is to rebalance trade relations and establish better “reciprocity”. Everyone involved is going to get hurt but wherein lies conflict, there also awaits opportunity.Let’s put aside the fact that Trump has demonstrated a serious misunderstanding about how economies work. His statements on trade deficits being indicative of lost national wealth is

March 27, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Escalation with Russia just became more likely

Despite a propaganda blitz meant to shift the blame for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK earlier this month, Russia looks set to face bruising consequences. The newfound unity among European Union leaders on the matter and the appointment of fierce Russia hawk John Bolton as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser are potential precursors of collective Western action against Russia.　The difficulty lies in figuring out how far that ac

March 27, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Why the EU approved Bayer-Monsanto

The European Union’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has a reputation as something of an activist because of her willingness to take on US tech giants. And yet she has approved what is, from a leftist activist point of view, a particularly evil deal, Germany-based Bayer’s acquisition of US-based Monsanto.　The $66 billion deal creates an incredible concentration in the seed and pesticide markets. If it’s approved in the US, too, the three biggest companies in this market -- Bayer-Mo

March 26, 2018

[Francis Wilkinson] The NRA’s strategic blunder

You had to be there.　As Americans took to the streets Saturday, defying a political order that, in Washington and many state capitals, has allowed extremists to write gun laws, the bodies -- of both the dead and the living who marched in their honor -- mattered a lot. Hundreds of thousands in cities big and small showed up. It was an extraordinary coming-out party for a movement that is now, at long last, undeniably mass.　The marches against gun violence would not have been as big without the un

March 26, 2018

[Noah Smith] As long as there are humans, there will be jobs

Predicting the course of technological progress is extremely difficult. Just because worries about human obsolescence ultimately turned out to be misplaced in the Industrial Revolution doesn’t mean that the same happy result must necessarily prevail this time around. So the persistent question about artificial intelligence -- or “robots” in common parlance -- is whether they will make human workers obsolete.Recent rapid progress in machine learning -- a very powerful and flexible statistical pre

March 26, 2018

[Timothy L. O’Brien] What Bolton should know about working for Trump

“Trump adviser” is an oxymoron. Thus it has always been, and thus it shall ever be.　President Donald Trump has rarely sought or heeded the advice of others, beginning several decades ago when he was a young developer in New York, through his years as a tabloid fixture and reality TV star, and on into the White House.　The president trusts his own instincts first and foremost, and lacks the attention span, curiosity and empathy to take other points of view on board. This should be no revelation to

March 25, 2018

[Joseph Holt] I’m in an abusive relationship with Facebook, and it’s becoming too much

With true friends, the more you learn about each other the more you like, trust and want to spend time with each other. With Facebook, the more I learn about their cavalier attitude toward users’ personal data, the more I don’t like, trust or want to spend time with them.　And the more I read about Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of the private data of more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission, the more stomach-turning I find it that the company celebrated its Feb. 4 anniversa

March 25, 2018

[Barry Ritholtz] Before you #DeleteFacebook, try taking control

#DeleteFacebook is trending on social media. 　But you don’t have to do anything as radical as deleting the app that keeps you in touch with friends, family members and so many Russian bots. Instead, consider taking full control of your account. A few steps can eliminate Facebook as a nefarious actor in your life, wrestling it into submission as a benign app.　I have been a skeptic about Facebook pretty much from the beginning -- it’s likely a generational thing. I have had issues with the lack of

March 23, 2018

[Daniel Moss] What China revealed in its national congress

In China, don’t forget the ones that got away.　This month’s session of the National People’s Congress, the legislature that typically rubber stamps the Communist Party’s wishes, made plenty of headlines on personnel and policies. Also telling is what didn’t happen and who didn’t get what job.　Notable omissions send important signals on what type of economy the incoming cabinet envisages and how much latitude the central bank, itself under new leadership, will have to steer it.The broader task fo

March 22, 2018

[Virginia Heffernan] A real recovery option for sexual abusers

Last Monday, James Levine, the longtime music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, was fired after the Met investigated his history of sexual abuse of young men, including teenagers. Levine sued the Met for $5.8 million for breach of contract and defamation.　Last Tuesday, a report surfaced that five women had accused the architect Richard Meier of groping, exhibitionism, assault and paying for silence. “While our recollections may differ,” Meier said in a statement, “I sincerely apolo

March 22, 2018

[Carl P. Leubsdorf] Top political leaders beginning to sound out of touch

For three of the nation’s most prominent political figures, today is still yesterday. Two years later, they’re still re-fighting the 2016 campaign.　President Donald Trump is constantly replaying -- and exaggerating -- his 2016 success, as if he needs to convince himself he really did win, and did so without the help that even some Republicans concede he got from Vladimir Putin.Similarly, Hillary Clinton is still trying to explain why she lost what should have been a sure thing. She’s blaming alm

March 22, 2018