The US government has set the stage for an economic experiment with its large, late-cycle fiscal stimulus, but the Trump administration’s trade agenda threatens to undermine the process as soon as it begins. Tax cuts and spending increases are projected to fuel an ill-advised federal budget deficit for 2019 in excess of $1 trillion. With the economy operating near full employment, the extra imp...

There’s a standard playbook for reviving cities by turning them into technology clusters. But not every town can become the next Silicon Valley, or Robot City, or biotech mecca. Minneapolis has shown that there is another way. Cities such as Raleigh, San Diego and Pittsburgh have all followed a similar model: Build around a top-ranked research university; bring together elites from government...

The time has come to ask whether membership in the European Union is still a quality assurance seal for democracy and the rule of law among member states. The bloc has clearly failed to enforce its stated values on its periphery. Any additional expansion can only dilute them further. On Monday, Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend Martina Kusnirova were found murdered -- shot with a ...

Xi Jinping can hold off on retirement planning for a few more years, now that China’s Communist Party has announced a proposal to eliminate a 10-year, two-term limit for China’s presidency. That sets up the powerful 64-year-old Xi to remain in office well into his golden years. He shouldn’t be the only one. Set aside for a moment the question of whether China is wise to usher in one-man rule. T...

It has become a widely accepted tenet of modern economics that markets are flawed and need fixing by experts to engineer desired outcomes. At the Winter Games in PyeongChang, which just concluded, the International Olympic Committee appeared to take this conviction to extremes, trying to fill stands through highly restricted, targeted and convoluted ticket sales. The process arguably produced mor...

China’s nearly 30 year experiment with time-limited government is officially coming to an end. The Chinese Communist Party has suggested amending China’s constitution to allow President Xi Jinping to serve more than two five-year terms. Considering that the party rules the country, and Xi rules the party, that means two things: The constitution will be amended. And Xi is going to be president for...

Amazon recently received patents for an “ultrasonic bracelet” that tracks workers’ movements. Pitched as a labor-saving device, they monitor how efficiently workers fill orders as well as giving them positive “haptic feedback” -- a little vibration -- as they reach for the correct bins, reducing unnecessary motion. If this sounds a bit like planning to turn humans into robots, you are not alone...

People concerned about robots taking away jobs might want to consider where it’s already happened. Machines with varying levels of intelligence have quietly taken over the most glamorous, coveted and admirable job in the world -- space exploration. It’s not that people can’t still be astronauts -- it’s just there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all the people with the desire and ability to do it....

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson traded barbs over how far the EU intends to push its integration agenda. In a speech Wednesday, the UK foreign secretary accused the EU of seeking to create an “overarching European state.” Not true, Juncker responded: “I am strictly against a European superstate. We are not the United St...

The European Union has had a democratic legitimacy problem for years: Its governing bodies -- with the exception of those that consist of national leaders and ministers -- are neither particularly responsive nor accountable to ordinary European voters. And, as the latest failed attempt to reform them has shown, they like it this way, for all the rhetoric about the need to overcome the democratic ...