Obama touts Asia trade to create jobs

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Back from an Asia tour, President Barack Obama called Saturday for the United States to produce more goods to sell across the Pacific, touting trade as a way to revive the troubled US economy.

Facing rising unemployment and slipping poll numbers, Obama assured the public that creating new jobs back home was his top priority on the weeklong tour that took him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.

"I traveled to Asia to open a new era of American engagement," Obama said in his weekly radio address, recorded while he was in Seoul.

"Above all, I spoke with leaders in every nation I visited about what we can do to sustain this economic recovery and bring back jobs and prosperity for our people -- a task I will continue to focus on relentlessly in the weeks and months ahead."

Obama, who was elected in the midst of the worst economic crisis in decades, said the lesson of the turmoil was that the world's largest economy should not fuel its growth on going into debt.

"In order to keep growing, we need to spend less, save more and get our federal deficit under control," he said.

"We also need to place a greater emphasis on exports that we can build, produce and sell to other nations -- exports that can help create new jobs at home and raise living standards throughout the world."

If the United States grew exports to Asia-Pacific nations by five percent, "we can increase the number of American jobs supported by these exports by hundreds of thousands," the president said.

He cited a Massachusetts-based American Superconductor Corporation, noting it has added more than 100 jobs by providing wind power and smart grid systems to Asia's emerging economies.

But Obama acknowledged he could not bring back all the jobs lost in the crisis.

"Even though it will take time, I can promise you this: we are moving in the right direction," he said.

Pro-trade business groups have had mixed feelings about Obama, whose Democratic Partylabor unions. enjoys strong support from

On his trip, Obama said the United States would engage in the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a hitherto obscure pact involving Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore -- in hopes of building a vast regional free trade zone.

But a free trade agreement between the United States and South Korea struck under predecessor George W. Bush remains in limbo, with Obama pressing Seoul to make more concessions for the beleaguered US auto industry.

The president has also taken heat from the US press for his trip, with commentators accusing him of swapping Bush's cowboy swagger with a "diplomacy of deference," behaving like the leader of a "weakened giant" and portraying him as going cap-in-hand to America's biggest creditor, China.