Obama, Lee pitch trade deal in Mich.

Associated Press

ORION TOWNSHIP, Mich.

President Barack Obama cast himself as a savior of the U.S. auto industry Friday, standing in a once-shuttered Michigan assembly plant with the president of South Korea to boast of a new trade deal and the auto bailout he pushed through Congress. “The investment paid off,” Obama declared.

At his side, South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak donned a Detroit Tigers cap to assure U.S. autoworkers that the new U.S.-South Korea trade pact wouldn’t steal away American jobs. “This is the pledge that I give you,” said Lee, acknowledging the suspicion with which U.S. labor unions view trade agreements.

In a rare political spectacle of a visiting head of state on a field trip outside Washington with the U.S. president, both sounding boosterish about American industry, Lee said the trade pact “will create more jobs for you and your family. And it is going to protect your jobs.”

The trip took Obama to a state that is key to his re-election hopes and where unemployment is the third-highest in the country. Obama has been paying special attention to Michigan; his most recent visit was to deliver a Labor Day speech in Detroit.

But in singling out the auto industry for special attention, Obama and his advisers believe he has a winning issue that stretches beyond Michigan and into other Midwestern states where automakers have a sizable footprint. At the same time, Obama and his advisers say the trade deal and the bailout were hard-fought victories for the president that portray him as a tough leader.

Obama credited the $80 billion bailout he pushed through Congress two years ago with reviving the once-shuttered plant and keeping General Motors and Chrysler from financial ruin.

“There were a lot of politicians who said it wasn’t worth the time and wasn’t worth the money. In fact, there are some politicians who still say that,” Obama said in an apparent shot at one of the leading challengers for his job, Republican Mitt Romney. “Well, they should come tell that to the workers here.”