Obama: Export plan key to jobs

WASHINGTON - President Obama sought yesterday to put some details behind his lofty drive to double the nation's exports over the next five years, calling the effort imperative to putting people back to work. But doubts remain about how he will achieve the goal - and about how many net jobs his trade agenda will create.

In a speech to the Export-Import Bank conference, the president outlined steps to flesh out his trade initiative. Among them:

Creating a mini-cabinet of officials to focus on exports.

Seeking more financing to support trade efforts.

Beefing up enforcement of existing trade deals.

Pushing for the completion of stalled ones.

"We shouldn't assume that our leadership is guaranteed," Obama said. "When other markets are growing, and other nations are competing, we've got to get even better.

"We need to secure our companies a level playing field," Obama said. "We need to guarantee American workers a fair shake. In other words, we need to up our game."

]His speech came on the same day the government reported that the U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly shrank in January. The decline reflected a big drop in imports of oil and foreign cars. But U.S. exports also fell, a potential blow to hopes that the recovery from the recession would be aided this year by U.S. sales abroad.

The deficit declined to $37.3 billion in January, a drop of 6.6 percent from a revised December deficit of $39.9 billion, the Commerce Department said. Economists had expected the deficit to widen to $41 billion.

Obama's trade pitch ties directly to the top concerns of Americans: the bleeding of jobs from the United States.

He promised in his State of the Union address that doubling trade over the next five years would support 2 million American jobs, a pledge he repeated yesterday. Thursday. But that's a complicated matter.

Experts caution, though, that new jobs from more exports can be negated by job losses resulting from increased reliance on products from abroad.