Obama to focus on opening new markets for US in India

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is leaving for India focused on opening on new markets for US products and creating jobs in America.

“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 Mumbai.

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 on 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 US and countries,” he said.

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

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