US President Barack Obama is challenging presumptive Republican Party nominee and former Massachusetts governor Mit Romney’s promises to crack down on China’s trading practices, with a new ad that claims Romney profited by allowing China to strip away US jobs.
Obama’s ad, released on Saturday, turns to a recent Washington Post report that several businesses backed by Romney’s former private equity firm, Bain Capital, moved US jobs to China and India to cut costs.
In a parting shot, a narrator says Romney is “not the solution. He’s the problem.”
The ad follows a two-day bus tour in Ohio and Pennsylvania by Obama where he announced plans to file a trade complaint against China at the WTO for unfairly imposing duties on US-produced automobiles. Ohio is home to several auto plants and tens of thousands of workers directly employed by the auto industry.
China remains a flashpoint in the presidential campaign.
Romney has accused Obama of failing to live up to promises to get tough on Beijing, saying he would label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office and fight the theft of intellectual property and job losses.
Obama’s administration says it has taken a broad effort to crack down on what it calls unfair Chinese trading practices, filing seven trade cases with the WTO against Beijing.
The 30-second spot opens with a clip of Romney during last year’s Republican primary debate.
He says “the Chinese are smiling all the way to the bank taking our jobs and taking a lot of our future and I am not willing to let that happen.”
A narrator says that Romney “made a fortune letting it happen.”
The Obama ad refers to the Post account about the role Romney’s former firm played with companies that were “pioneers” in helping outsource jobs. It points to one business that said it was a “one-stop shop for their outsource requirements.”
“Mitt Romney’s not the solution. He’s the problem,” the narrator says.
It was “no surprise President Obama would want to distract Americans from the devastating June jobs numbers, but the American people deserve better than dishonest ads,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.
The accusations over China come against the backdrop of a sluggish economy. Last month’s jobs report, released on Friday, found that the economy added only 80,000 jobs during the month and unemployment stayed at 8.2 percent, fueling Romney’s charges that Obama has failed to guide the economy out of the recession.
The Obama spot is part of a US$25 million ad buy for this month and will run in New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.
The ad represents the latest attempt by Obama’s team to discredit Romney’s argument that his private sector experience makes him more qualified than the president to steer the economy during high unemployment.
Obama’s campaign has repeatedly cited the recent Washington Post story outlining how several businesses backed by Bain Capital transferred jobs to lower-wage countries such as China and India.
Romney’s campaign has questioned the accuracy of the report and asked the Post for a retraction. The newspaper stood by its report.
At campaign events, Obama has pointed to the outsourcing charges, saying he would end tax credits for companies that shipped jobs overseas, similar to a pledge he made during his 2008 campaign.
“You want somebody who will give tax breaks to companies that create jobs in manufacturing here in the United States, not ship them overseas,” Obama said last month in Miami Beach, Florida.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the