国际英语新闻:Obama Touts US Economic Gains

President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to advance his plan to increase U.S. exports, after a week of upbeat news about the nation’s economy.  The president spoke Friday, at the end of a three-day fundraising trip to the Western United States.

President Obama spoke to workers in the gigantic Boeing airplane assembly plant near the northwestern city of Seattle, Washington.  He emerged from one of the newly-built Boeing jetliners being sold to overseas airlines, to promote his goal to boost exports.

“The Dreamliner is the plane of the future.  And by building it here, Boeing is taking advantage of a huge opportunity that exists right now to bring more jobs and manufacturing back to the United States of America,” he said.

Mr. Obama said the U.S. is ahead of schedule toward meeting the goal he set three years ago of doubling American exports by 2014.

To speed that progress, he called on lawmakers to pass his plan to reform the nation’s tax code, ending tax breaks for businesses that move jobs overseas and rewarding companies that create jobs in the U.S.

The president also urged Congress to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, the government’s export credit agency.  He said the bank is starting a program to help subsidize small U.S. businesses’ efforts to increase their exports.

He mentioned the bank’s role in helping Boeing sell 230 planes to the Indonesian airline Lion Air last year, a deal worth more than $22 billion.  It was the company’s biggest order ever.