President Barack Obama will tell voters in the battleground state of Ohio today that his administration filed a claim with the World Trade Organization against China, charging it with unfair tariffs on U.S. autos, a welcome message in the U.S. rust belt.
The action comes as Obama begins a two-day campaign bus trip. The “Betting on America” tour, as the Obama campaign has dubbed it, has stops in places whose economies are affected by the auto industry. The label is designed to draw a contrast with presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a former private-equity executive whose business dealings included investments overseas.
Obama also will talk about the health-care law upheld last week by the Supreme Court, said campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki. He will emphasize protections for sick and younger Americans, and describe Romney as flip-flopping on the law’s penalty for those who don’t get insurance coverage.
While Romney now says requiring Americans to obtain health insurance is a tax, he and his advisers previously described a fee facing those not obtaining coverage as a penalty.
Psaki told reporters traveling with Obama today that Romney is “being impacted by the push from the right” including congressional Republicans and “the Rush Limbaughs of the world,” referring to the talk radio host, to switch his view of whether a mandate is a penalty or a tax.
[h=2]Ohio Manufacturing[/h] The duties in the WTO claim cover more than 80 percent of US auto exports to China including cars manufactured in the Ohio cities of Toledo and Marysville, Ohio, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One.
Carney said the WTO claim, the seventh such action against China taken by the administration, was “in development for quite a long time,” and that it was not politically driven.
Polls show that linking Romney to the outsourcing of U.S. jobs when he was at Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, which he co- founded, is an effective approach with voters in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Obama will end the trip.
“If the election’s about Romney and Bain, then the president’s going to win,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. “For Romney, it has to be about Obama: Obama and jobs, Obama and leadership, Obama and the economy, and Obama and health-care.”
[h=2]Jobs Report[/h] The president may be shadowed on his trip by new data showing weakness in the U.S. economic recovery. The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, set for release tomorrow, is likely to show the U.S. unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. In May, the jobless rate rose to the 8.2 percent figure from 8.1 percent in April.
Ohio and Pennsylvania, both of which Obama won in 2008, have a combined 38 electoral votes in this year’s election. Since filing for re-election in April 2011, Obama has visited Ohio nine times and Pennsylvania eight times.
During his tour, Obama plans to stop in small towns including Maumee and Parma in northern Ohio before entering Pennsylvania. Most of the stops -- including an ice cream social in Sandusky, Ohio -- are aimed at middle-income voters. He will cap off the trip at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Paul Beck, a professor of political science at Ohio State University, said the president’s decision to visit counties he won in 2008 shows that he’s not taking anything for granted.
[h=2]‘Close Contest’[/h] “It’s going to be a very close contest here and when you have that kind of focus you have two battlegrounds: independent voters and you need to make sure that you squeeze every vote out of your core constituency that you can,” Beck said.
Romney’s campaign also recognizes the electoral importance of winning in Ohio and Pennsylvania. His events in the region have included a speech in Cincinnati on June 14 -- the same day Obama was speaking across the state in Cleveland. A trip in early May that officially began Obama’s re-election bid included a stop in Columbus, Ohio’s capital.
The Ohio Republican Party plans to capitalize on what it calls apathy among Democrats and an eagerness among Republicans to mobilize to defeat Obama.
“From his underwhelming stop in Cleveland last month, to his absolute flop of a campaign kickoff in Columbus, Ohioans are showing over and over again that they have had enough of Barack Obama’s failed economic policies and repetitive, empty rhetoric,” said Ohio Republican Party spokeswoman Izzy Santa.
[h=2]Poll Results[/h] Obama led Romney by nine percentage points in Ohio and six in Pennsylvania, according to a “Swing State Poll” conducted June 19-25 by Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University. The poll of 1,237 Ohio voters and 1,252 Pennsylvania voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent. In 2008, Obama beat Republican John McCain in Ohio by five percentage points and in Pennsylvania by 11.
Still, Obama lost the 2008 Democratic primaries to Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Republican George W. Bush won Ohio in 2000 and 2004.
Beck said many white middle-class voters in the region don’t feel loyal to Obama and some still have trouble voting for a black president. “While most people have gotten beyond racial prejudice, it still exists there and it’s something Obama will have to work against,” he said.
If the economic data “is suggesting economic problems ahead and slowdown, the harder it will be to keep the focus on Romney,” putting Ohio at risk for Obama, Rothenberg said.
[h=2]Ohio’s Recovery[/h] Ohio has been recovering faster than most of the country. It ranks sixth in improving economic health in the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States from the first quarter of 2011 through the first quarter of this year, the most recent data available. The unemployment rate in Ohio was 7.3 percent in May, lower than the national rate of 8.2 percent for that month and down from a high of 10.6 percent from July 2009 through January 2010.
The Obama campaign started airing a television ad July 3 in nine states including Ohio and Pennsylvania that says Romney’s team at Bain “were pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low- wage countries.” The ad says Obama “believes in insourcing” and “fought to save the U.S. auto industry.”
Through July 2, the campaign aired two ads 504 times on stations that reach Ohio voters, blaming Romney and Bain Capital for job losses at a steel company. Another ad from the Obama campaign, citing a Washington Post article that Bain sent jobs overseas, was run 247 times on stations that reach Ohio voters beginning June 27 through July 2, according to data from Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks campaign advertising.
Priorities USA Action, the super-political action committee backing Obama, has produced four television ads that have run 2,357 times in Ohio; three of those ads also either ran or are running in Pennsylvania 2,591 times.
Nationally, Obama’s approval rating stood at 46 percent in a Gallup tracking poll taken June 30-July 2. He led Romney 48 percent to 44 percent in a Gallup poll taken June 26-July 2.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kate Andersen Brower aboard Air Force One at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]
The action comes as Obama begins a two-day campaign bus trip. The “Betting on America” tour, as the Obama campaign has dubbed it, has stops in places whose economies are affected by the auto industry. The label is designed to draw a contrast with presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a former private-equity executive whose business dealings included investments overseas.
Obama also will talk about the health-care law upheld last week by the Supreme Court, said campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki. He will emphasize protections for sick and younger Americans, and describe Romney as flip-flopping on the law’s penalty for those who don’t get insurance coverage.
While Romney now says requiring Americans to obtain health insurance is a tax, he and his advisers previously described a fee facing those not obtaining coverage as a penalty.
Psaki told reporters traveling with Obama today that Romney is “being impacted by the push from the right” including congressional Republicans and “the Rush Limbaughs of the world,” referring to the talk radio host, to switch his view of whether a mandate is a penalty or a tax.
[h=2]Ohio Manufacturing[/h] The duties in the WTO claim cover more than 80 percent of US auto exports to China including cars manufactured in the Ohio cities of Toledo and Marysville, Ohio, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One.
Carney said the WTO claim, the seventh such action against China taken by the administration, was “in development for quite a long time,” and that it was not politically driven.
Polls show that linking Romney to the outsourcing of U.S. jobs when he was at Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, which he co- founded, is an effective approach with voters in the swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Obama will end the trip.
“If the election’s about Romney and Bain, then the president’s going to win,” said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington. “For Romney, it has to be about Obama: Obama and jobs, Obama and leadership, Obama and the economy, and Obama and health-care.”
[h=2]Jobs Report[/h] The president may be shadowed on his trip by new data showing weakness in the U.S. economic recovery. The Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, set for release tomorrow, is likely to show the U.S. unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. In May, the jobless rate rose to the 8.2 percent figure from 8.1 percent in April.
Ohio and Pennsylvania, both of which Obama won in 2008, have a combined 38 electoral votes in this year’s election. Since filing for re-election in April 2011, Obama has visited Ohio nine times and Pennsylvania eight times.
During his tour, Obama plans to stop in small towns including Maumee and Parma in northern Ohio before entering Pennsylvania. Most of the stops -- including an ice cream social in Sandusky, Ohio -- are aimed at middle-income voters. He will cap off the trip at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Paul Beck, a professor of political science at Ohio State University, said the president’s decision to visit counties he won in 2008 shows that he’s not taking anything for granted.
[h=2]‘Close Contest’[/h] “It’s going to be a very close contest here and when you have that kind of focus you have two battlegrounds: independent voters and you need to make sure that you squeeze every vote out of your core constituency that you can,” Beck said.
Romney’s campaign also recognizes the electoral importance of winning in Ohio and Pennsylvania. His events in the region have included a speech in Cincinnati on June 14 -- the same day Obama was speaking across the state in Cleveland. A trip in early May that officially began Obama’s re-election bid included a stop in Columbus, Ohio’s capital.
The Ohio Republican Party plans to capitalize on what it calls apathy among Democrats and an eagerness among Republicans to mobilize to defeat Obama.
“From his underwhelming stop in Cleveland last month, to his absolute flop of a campaign kickoff in Columbus, Ohioans are showing over and over again that they have had enough of Barack Obama’s failed economic policies and repetitive, empty rhetoric,” said Ohio Republican Party spokeswoman Izzy Santa.
[h=2]Poll Results[/h] Obama led Romney by nine percentage points in Ohio and six in Pennsylvania, according to a “Swing State Poll” conducted June 19-25 by Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University. The poll of 1,237 Ohio voters and 1,252 Pennsylvania voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent. In 2008, Obama beat Republican John McCain in Ohio by five percentage points and in Pennsylvania by 11.
Still, Obama lost the 2008 Democratic primaries to Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and Republican George W. Bush won Ohio in 2000 and 2004.
Beck said many white middle-class voters in the region don’t feel loyal to Obama and some still have trouble voting for a black president. “While most people have gotten beyond racial prejudice, it still exists there and it’s something Obama will have to work against,” he said.
If the economic data “is suggesting economic problems ahead and slowdown, the harder it will be to keep the focus on Romney,” putting Ohio at risk for Obama, Rothenberg said.
[h=2]Ohio’s Recovery[/h] Ohio has been recovering faster than most of the country. It ranks sixth in improving economic health in the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States from the first quarter of 2011 through the first quarter of this year, the most recent data available. The unemployment rate in Ohio was 7.3 percent in May, lower than the national rate of 8.2 percent for that month and down from a high of 10.6 percent from July 2009 through January 2010.
The Obama campaign started airing a television ad July 3 in nine states including Ohio and Pennsylvania that says Romney’s team at Bain “were pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low- wage countries.” The ad says Obama “believes in insourcing” and “fought to save the U.S. auto industry.”
Through July 2, the campaign aired two ads 504 times on stations that reach Ohio voters, blaming Romney and Bain Capital for job losses at a steel company. Another ad from the Obama campaign, citing a Washington Post article that Bain sent jobs overseas, was run 247 times on stations that reach Ohio voters beginning June 27 through July 2, according to data from Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks campaign advertising.
Priorities USA Action, the super-political action committee backing Obama, has produced four television ads that have run 2,357 times in Ohio; three of those ads also either ran or are running in Pennsylvania 2,591 times.
Nationally, Obama’s approval rating stood at 46 percent in a Gallup tracking poll taken June 30-July 2. He led Romney 48 percent to 44 percent in a Gallup poll taken June 26-July 2.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kate Andersen Brower aboard Air Force One at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected]