WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday named General Electric’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the chair of the White House’s new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, restructuring his economic team to place an emphasis on job creation.
Speaking after touring a future GE battery manufacturing plant in Schenectady, N.Y., Obama called Immelt “one of the nation’s most respected and admired business leaders,” adding that in the days ahead he will announce more economists and business leaders who will join Immelt on the new jobs-focused panel.
Obama said that “putting the economy into overdrive” is a top priority for his administration, recommitting himself to spending the next two years trying to speed up the economic recovery. His success or failure there is likely to be the central issue of the coming 2012 presidential campaign.
“Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root, and folks can find good jobs,” the president said. “We’re going to build stuff, and invent stuff,” he added, emphasizing the need to boost American exports to countries around the world, an issue that was a focus during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House earlier this week.
In appointing GE’s Immelt — who for the past decade has run the diversified technology, media and financial services company — the president is solidifying his administration’s efforts to improve its relationship with the business community, with whom the White House has had strained ties for the last two years.“That’s where the customers are. It's that simple,” Obama said.
(Msnbc.com is a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal, which is owned by GE.)
The move was quickly welcomed by business, with whom Obama is trying to thaw relations that chilled over his healthcare and financial regulatory reforms.
The "President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness" replaces an economic recovery advisory panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who is stepping down when his group dissolves next month.
Bringing Immelt on board is the latest sign from Obama that he is serious about building better ties with business.
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