Trip’s focus put on jobs, markets

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will leave Friday on a nine-day trip to Hawaii, Australia and Indonesia, underscoring the region’s rising profile but leaving town at a politically inconvenient time as he accuses Congress of not doing enough to goose the stalled economy.

White House officials defended the trip Wednesday as vital to U.S. economic and security interests, arguing that Asia and the Pacific comprise the “fastest-growing economic region in the world.”

“When the American people see the president traveling in Asia-Pacific, they will see him advocating for U.S. jobs and U.S. businesses,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser. “He will be trying to open new markets. He will be trying to achieve new export initiatives.

“When you ask why we are so focused on this region, an overwhelming reason why is because of the economic potential and direct tie into people at home.”

Analysts say the trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii, along with the stops in Australia and Indonesia, underscores the key role that the new global financial powerhouse is playing and the U.S. interest in staying engaged in the region as China’s influence expands and U.S. finances are limited.

The trip comes as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – who made Asia her first official overseas destination in 2009 – has signaled a new phase for U.S. policy. She wrote recently in Foreign Policy magazine that “one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will … be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise – in the Asia-Pacific region.”

However, with a stubbornly high 9 percent U.S. unemployment rate and congressional negotiators struggling to deliver by Nov. 23 a plan to cut the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years, there’s likely to be grumbling that Obama should be at home, focusing on domestic priorities.

“There is pressure here not to do the trip,” said Ernie Bower, who chairs the southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center, citing the political maxim that “it’s always better to be in Indiana than Indonesia. That sort of thread is out there.”

But Bower said he expected that “in the end” the president would keep to his schedule, noting that not showing up at the last scheduled stop – in Bali, Indonesia, for the East Asia Summit – “would be a real mistake.”

“It would underline a narrative that the Chinese have promoted, in some sense, that the Americans are interested in Asia, but they’re not consistently engaged.”

White House officials said the president was able to stay in touch with the White House when he was abroad and that the trip was aimed at ensuring that the U.S. “remains the pre-eminent economic and security power in the Asia-Pacific.”

“Increasingly the center of gravity in the 21st century is going to make Asia-Pacific critical to all of our interests,” Rhodes said. “If you want America to be a world leader in this century, that leadership is going to have to include the Asia-Pacific.”