Is there a war on men and maleness in America?Last week, a new Gillette razor company ad inspired by the #MeToo campaign was quickly denounced for supposedly slandering men as boorish and abusive.And earlier this month, the American Psychological Association was attacked for its new guidelines on male mental health, which critics said were biased against masculinity.Both controversies, which are still raging, have pitted “woke” progressives against defenders of traditional manhood. But each side

As another European Commission megafine on Alphabet nears, it prompts the question: can the Google parent ever free itself from the specter of penalties from the region’s regulators? The same goes for Amazon and Facebook, each of which is facing scrutiny for how it handles data. They could do a lot worse than looking to a fellow West Coast tech giant for a playbook.It wasn’t all that long ago that Microsoft was the European Commission’s nemesis. For most of the first decade of the millennium, th

No Western liberal would disagree that US President Donald Trump’s election was a disaster for American society, while that of President Emmanuel Macron was a triumph for French society. In fact, the opposite may well be true, as heretical as that sounds.The first question to ask is why people are engaged in violent street protests in Paris, but not in Washington. I have personally experienced these Paris protests, and the smell of tear gas on the Champs-Elysees reminded me of the ethnic riots I

On Nov. 19, Carlos Ghosn, the board chair and former CEO of Nissan, was arrested at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on suspicion of underreporting income and misusing corporate funds for personal purposes; he remains in custody. Less than two weeks later, Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei and daughter of its founder, was arrested in transit at Vancouver’s airport on charges by the United States that Huawei had violated US sanctions against Iran; out on bail, she now awaits an extraditio

Now that the government shutdown is over, perhaps it is appropriate to consider a delicate question: Is it still OK to tell people they need to save more money?It’s an issue that came to the fore during the last five weeks, when hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, and many contractors, didn’t get paid, leaving many of them illiquid. I sympathize with the frustrated, laid-off workers -- my wife was one of them -- and consider the government shutdown to have been flat-out stupid.

Several news sources used the accurate but uncharitable term “cave” to describe US President Donald Trump’s capitulation Friday to the Democrats’ position on the wall and the government shutdown.It was a clear victory for the Democrats, but House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer were prudently restrained in their celebration. The victory is only a three-week reprieve. There’s no reason to believe that Trump has learned this episode’s most important lesson: A governme

In the past decade, China has relied primarily on credit growth to fund its economic ambitions. The country’s banks are now feeling the constraints of this lending binge and need to raise a lot of capital over the next couple of years.The way China handles this challenge will determine its economic health. With 267 trillion yuan ($39.4 trillion) of total assets, and home to the world’s four largest banks by this measure, the country’s financial system doesn’t operate in isolation. Whatever happe

Give Donald Trump credit. On Wednesday the US president recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim president. At least a dozen other countries in the Western Hemisphere have since followed suit.There were signs that such a move was in the works. Senior US officials had declared as illegitimate the 2018 election that gave President Nicolas Maduro a second term. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence released a video pledging US support for popular protests against

We are in the midst of a new Cold War, with the United States and China carving out separate economic and political orders. Let’s consider how it might look in a few years.There will be two separate internets, with the US and China as the two dominant players. American tech companies still will be kept out of China, and Chinese tech companies will find it hard to get Western contracts or sales, as Huawei is discovering with its plans to build 5G networks. National security and surveillance consi