Obama flies to India looking to lift U.S. economy

MUMBAI, India – President Obama hasn’t been able to drive down unemployment in America, so he’s coming to India in search of U.S. jobs.

Four days after his party suffered heavy, economy-influenced losses in Congress, the president will arrive today in Mumbai, India’s booming financial center, where he will meet with local business leaders and with American executives who have traveled to India in search of billions of dollars in trade deals.

The White House hopes to announce agreements on aircraft and other exports, and generally broadcast that America is open for business with burgeoning India and its 1.2 billion residents.

The administration said that jobs and the U.S. economy were the focus of Obama’s 10-day Asia trip, a message aimed at inoculating him against any criticism that he was concentrating on foreign affairs while Americans were suffering with unemployment at 9.6 percent. He left Washington shortly after the government reported the economy added 151,000 jobs in October but still not enough to lower the jobless rate.

The president said the jobs report was encouraging but “not good enough.” In a gesture toward Republicans who won control of the House and made strong gains in the Senate in elections Tuesday, Obama said he was open to “any idea, any proposal” to get the economy growing faster. Republicans generally say the answer is more tax cuts and looser government regulations.

On his foreign trip, the longest of his presidency so far, Obama’s business-first message is aimed particularly at India, where he is spending three full days. That’s the longest amount of time in any one country on a trip that’s also taking him to Indonesia, where he lived for four years as a youth, to South Korea for a meeting of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations and then to Japan for an American Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.