Obama likely to miss goal of doubling exports

Back in January 2010, President Barack Obama set a lofty goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years. With just 18 months to go to 2015, that target seems to be slipping beyond reach and has vanished from White House talking points.

Blame tepid U.S. manufacturing growth, the lingering weak global economy, and a stronger U.S. dollar, which makes it harder to sell American goods and services overseas.

Monthly export numbers have been mostly stagnant this year. And only a scant 6,000 manufacturing jobs were added last month, according to Labor Department jobs statistics released Friday.

The number of overall manufacturing jobs has changed little over the past 12 months.

"The goal of doubling exports keeps getting harder to achieve, not easier," said Alan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represents about 2,000 mostly family-owned manufacturing companies. "We're actually backsliding, not making progress."

Obama and administration officials counter by asserting that 7.2 million jobs -- 500,000 of them in manufacturing -- have been added since job losses bottomed in March 2010, two months after Obama set his doubling-exports goal.

"Over the past four years, for the first time since the 1990s, the number of manufacturing jobs hasn't gone down. It's gone up. Now we have to build on that progress," Obama said this week in Chattanooga, Tenn., after similar stops in Illinois, Missouri and Florida the week before.

The lack of significant progress underscores how hard it will be to reach his goal of doubling U.S. exports by the end of next year.

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, Obama said, "The more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America. So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support 2 million jobs in America."

For all of 2009, U.S. exports totaled $1.6 trillion. Doubling that would suggest reaching a level of $3.2 trillion in exports for all of 2014.

U.S. exports did rise to $2.2 trillion in 2012. But then came slowdowns in Europe, China and Brazil.

In May, the most recent trade figures available, monthly U.S. exports slipped 0.3 percent, to $187.1 billion. New trade numbers are due out next week.