At Detroit auto plant, Obama hails trade deals as ‘win-win’

Much as he may want to run against a “do-nothing” Congress, President Obama found himself marking congressional passage of major trade deals, appearing Friday at a General Motors plant in Michigan to tout the South Korean pact, in particular, as a “win-win” for both countries.

Obama was accompanied on the trip by the visiting South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, who proved himself a savvy politician by donning a Detroit Tigers cap for the occasion. The Tigers are playing the Texas Rangers in the American League Championship Series.

Over the summer, Obama urged Congress to approve trade deals with South Korea, Panama and Colombia -- part of a list of steps he said were necessary to boost the economy and curb unemployment. Congress ratified the trade pacts Wednesday.

Obama has warned he would target Congress as a “do-nothing” body if lawmakers try to tie up his agenda. He is talking specifically about his $447-billion jobs package, which is stalled in Congress. But it’s harder for him to make the “do-nothing” charge stick if Congress acts in bipartisan fashion to usher in major parts of his agenda.

In any case, Obama seemed ebullient as he and his South Korean counterpart plugged the new trade agreements. He said he looked forward to the sale of fuel-efficient Chryslers and Chevys to Korean customers.

“When all was said and done, President Lee and I walked away with a trade agreement that was a win-win for both countries,” Obama said. “Here in the U.S., this trade agreement will support at least 70,000 American jobs. It will increase exports, it will boost our economy by more than our last nine trade agreements combined.”

Obama said the trade deals had won broad-based support – “business and labor ... Democrats and Republicans.”

“That doesn’t happen very often,” he said.

But some in the labor movement weren’t convinced. The AFL-CIO, on its website, wrote that the Korean trade pact “could displace tens of thousands of good jobs in the United States.”

The union added that “U.S trade policies have contributed to the off-shoring of U.S. jobs and our nation’s trade deficit has played a major role in the decline of domestic manufacturing.”

If Congress wasn’t the foil on this trip, one of Obama’s potential Republican foes in the 2012 election was.

Obama said that “one of the first decisions” he made as president was “to save the U.S. auto industry from collapse.”

“You know, there were a lot of politicians who said it wasn’t worth the time and it wasn’t worth the money. In fact, there are some politicians who still say that,” he said.

By “some politicians,” he clearly meant former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who boasts roots in Michigan.

Answering a question in Tuesday’s Bloomberg/Washington Post debate about the 2008 financial rescue plan, Romney said there were “some institutions that should not have been bailed out.”

“Should they have used the funds to bail out General Motors and Chrysler? No, that was the wrong source for that funding,” Romney said.

Democrats this week have also highlighted Romney’s defense of a November 2008 op-ed piece, headlined: “Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

“Two years ago, it looked like this plant was going to have to shut its doors. All these jobs would have been lost,” Obama said. “I refused to let that happen.”