Opinion

If the Trump presidency and Brexit convinced the European Union to start acting more like a sovereign power and less like a supermarket, Covid-19 has shown there’s a depressingly long journey ahead. First there was fighting over protective medical equipment. Then the bungled start to its vaccine rollout. Now the ...

When Covid-19 first plunged Europe into lockdown last spring, there were plausible predictions of a tidal wave of corporate insolvencies. That hasn’t happened, at least not yet. The number of companies declaring bankruptcy declined by about a fifth in the euro area last year, even as economic output contracted more ...

It hasn’t been an edifying few days for Hong Kong. After a domestic worker from the Philippines was found late last week to have contracted a more infectious strain of Covid-19 locally, all 370,000 foreign women working in the territory’s homes were ordered to take coronavirus tests, many queueing for ...

In the debate over President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and climate bill, it was perhaps inevitable that some policy makers would object to including anything other than traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges. More surprising is the “new pundit view,” which casts doubt about spending in precisely that narrow category. ...

As anyone who has tried to invest in India can tell you, India’s states are as distinct from each other as European countries. Every now and then, India’s politicians are reminded of this as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi certainly was earlier this week, when his all-conquering Bharatiya Janata Party ...

Britain’s Vaccine Task Force was the country’s biggest triumph since the 2012 Olympics — and it was a lot more consequential. It gave the UK, which has one of the world’s highest pandemic death tolls, early access to a suite of effective vaccines and a jumpstart on immunising the population. ...

Fining and imprisoning Australians returning from India is more than just an extreme effort to discourage travel from the subcontinent during its calamitous surge in Covid cases. It’s emblematic of a siege mentality that politicians, sadly, see as a winning electoral strategy. Australia has temporarily banned its citizens from entering ...

President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan is smart to look beyond ports and potholes. But I worry about the part of the plan aimed at expanding broadband. It’s both too ambitious and not ambitious enough. Make no mistake, broadband is infrastructure. It’s unacceptable that American schoolchildren have to piggyback ...

Italy’s parliament has approved Mario Draghi’s 261 billion-euro ($315 billion) spending plan to resurrect the euro zone’s third-largest economy from the ruins of the pandemic. Now comes the hard part: Implementing the tough structural reforms Italy needs to drive growth and rebalance public accounts, and convincing Italians it’s the right ...

Elon Musk has done a better job at selling and making cars in China in just two years than he has in the US over the past decade. As a foreign business, he’s also had a smooth ride with the authorities — until recently. Last Month, a Tesla Inc owner ...