China, Brazil and Intel

US President Barack Obama is visiting Asia this week. We look at media comment on this international event, as well as on economic growth in Brazil and on Intel’s antitrust settlement.

Obama in China

The US is not the financial superpower it used to be. But that is no excuse for Barack Obama to humble himself in front of its Chinese hosts, writes the Financial Times.

Gone are the days when the US president could visit Beijing as the unassailable top dog, able to lecture the Chinese on everything from human rights to an overvalued currency. As has become fashionable to note, events have instead obliged Barack Obama to play the role of washed-up debtor visiting his stern bank manager for yet another loan. ... [A]ny idea that China, with an economy less than a third the size of the US and a GDP per capita roughly the same as Angola’s, can somehow save the world is ridiculous. Mr Obama is right to show respect to China. He need not — and must not — kowtow.

Brazil on a roll

In 2003, Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC nations) were named as the countries whose economies were likely to dominate the world in future. The Economist writes that Brazil is moving towards global economic power even faster than expected.

... China may be leading the world economy out of recession, but Brazil is also on a roll. It did not avoid the downturn, but was among the last in and the first out. Its economy is growing again at an annualised rate of 5%. It should pick up more speed over the next few years as big new deep-sea oilfields come on stream, and as Asian countries still hunger for food and minerals ... Forecasts vary, but sometime in the decade after 2014 ... Brazil is likely to become the world’s fifth largest economy, overtaking Britain and France. ...

Helping consumers

The computer chip maker Intel has agreed to pay a huge sum to settle an antitrust and patent suit. Now, government agencies are also considering taking the semiconductor giant to court. All of this is in the best interests of consumers, writes the International Herald Tribune.

Intel’s antitrust and patent settlement with Advanced Micro Devices is good news for A.M.D., which now finds itself $1.25 billion richer, but it is less clear what it does for the general public. Intel has been accused of stifling competition and driving up prices through a wide array of anticompetitive practices ... Antitrust law can seem like an abstraction, but in the case of computer chips the impact on consumers is very real. ... If Intel is using its market power to keep prices high and fend offbetter products, it is consumers who are the losers.