[Leonid Bershidsky] The EU digital tax is back and as wrong as ever

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

March 18, 2018

[Adam Minter] Hawking taught us how to be wrong

In 2002, the future Nobel Prize-winner Peter Higgs joined several fellow physicists at a dinner in Edinburgh. Drinks flowed and the professional invective followed. According to a report published in the Scotsman the following morning, the gathered physicists were frustrated by, and perhaps a little jealous of Stephen Hawking. “It is very difficult to engage him (Hawking) in discussion, and so he has got away with pronouncements in a way that other people would not,” Higgs is quoted as saying. “

March 16, 2018

[Los Angeles Times] Mission impossible: Running stable foreign policy for unstable president

Rex Tillerson was the wrong person to run the US State Department, and he has done deep damage to the organization -- most notably by proposing a controversial restructuring plan that would have shrunk the department, triggering the resignations of more than half the senior career diplomats and failing to fill top vacancies. But given Tillerson’s role as one of the few sane heads in the upper echelon of the Trump administration, it doesn’t bode well for the country that the president canned him

March 15, 2018

[Eli Lake] Tillerson’s exit hurts Iran deal, but not Korea talks

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

March 15, 2018

[Jay Ambrose] North Korean talks could save the world

President Donald Trump is going to sit down with Kim Jong-un and try to devise a way for North Korea to get rid of all of its nuclear firepower. This might not work, but, if it does, it could save the world, making up for the despicable laxity of preceding presidents. It’s diplomacy of the kind so many wanted, happens to be even more important than Trump’s rumored affair with adult video star Stormy Daniels -- and what’s the response?　Hand-wringing, that’s what, at least from too many news stori

March 15, 2018

[Adam Minter] China gives batteries a second life

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

March 14, 2018

[Ramesh Thakur] Could Kim-Trump summit succeed?

Last year, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump were hurling kindergarten insults at each other -- “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission,” said Trump of Kim; “mentally deranged US dotard,” Kim retorted -- while threatening to reduce East Asia to a post-atomic wasteland. Now, in a stunning and dramatic development, the two are to meet by May. Kim reportedly is willing to denuclearize and eager to talk directly to Trump, who has agreed.But optimism about this turn of events must b

March 14, 2018

[David Ignatius] Trump will have a kindred spirit in Pompeo -- for better or worse

The Great Disrupter and the Boy Scout were never comfortable partners. So there was a sense of inevitability to President Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he was dumping Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and installing Mike Pompeo, the man he wanted in that job back in November.The gregarious, risk-taking Pompeo has an easy rapport with Trump that the more cautious, reticent Tillerson never achieved. A successful secretary of state needs to be able to speak for the president -- something Till

March 14, 2018

[Noah Smith] Trump’s tariffs look like self-inflicted wounds

"Trade wars," President Donald Trump recently declared on Twitter, “are good, and easy to win.” But it’s questionable whether the president’s proposed tariffs -- a tax of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum -- will be a war or an act of friendly fire.　Tariffs are generally not a good way to promote domestic industry. They encourage American producers to hunker down behind the tax’s protective wall, focusing on the captive local market instead of figuring out how to p

March 13, 2018

[James Stavridis] US has bigger problems in Asia than N. Korea

Now that the shock of President Donald Trump’s decision to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in May has worn off, it’s time to consider the broader strategic implications of how the US can best approach Kim’s lethal regime in particular, and Asia in general.　Let’s start with the tactical: Trump’s remarkable gamble of essentially “taking a meeting” with Kim is a fascinating new twist on traditional diplomacy. It will certainly capture headlines, but will it really change anything? Doubt

March 13, 2018

[Park Sang-seek] Why has North Korea turned to a peace offensive?

Seizing the occasion of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, North Korea started a peace campaign toward South Korea and the US. Different North Korea specialists and observers have different interpretations of North Korea’s sudden policy U-turn. Has the North Korean leadership’s siege mentality -- real or imagined, which it has been using as a tactical means to justify its totalitarian rule and military and subversive offensive against South Korea since the end of the Korean War -- turned into a pa

March 13, 2018