Obama on a mission to sell more in India

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama embarking on an Asia trip focused on “opening up additional markets like India” so that American business can sell more products abroad to create jobs in the US.

“I won’t be satisfied until everybody who is looking for a job can find one,” he said in a White House statement before taking off on a 10-day trip to Asia, with the first stop in India’s financial capital of Mumbai.

“That’s why on this trip I am going to be talking about opening up additional markets like India so that American business can sell more products to create more jobs here at home,” Obama said.

Obama called Friday’s jobs report “encouraging news”, including 10 straight months of job growth and more than one million for the whole year.

But, he added, “the unemployment rate is still unacceptably high, and we still have a lot of work to do.”

The president, who saw his Democratic Party lose control of the US House in this week’s elections, also called for Republican cooperation to help create jobs, saying “we can’t spend the next two years mired in gridlock.”

The “most important competition” isn’t between the parties, but between the United States and countries.

He repeated his call to “put politics aside.”

The US Labour Department reported an uptick of 151,000 jobs in October, though the jobless rate stayed at 9.6 percent.

Obama called for loan increases to small business owners and extensions of unemployment benefits, saying both will help people create and find jobs.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)