President Barack Obama will promote steps to boost U.S. exportsas he visits the commercial aviation hub of Boeing Co., theplanemaker at the center of a regulatory clash last year.

Obama will announce plans for Export-Import Bank financing forU.S. companies to match foreign competitors' sources of officialfunding and an experimental program to ease access to credit forsmall-business exporters, the White House said before his stoptoday at Boeing's jet factory in Everett, Washington, which hasmore than 35,000 employees.

Touring a Boeing plant gives Obama an industrial backdrop forhis manufacturing initiatives and puts him at a company targeted ina 2011 National Labor Relations Board complaint that Republicanscited as evidence of hostility toward business. The case wasdropped after a new union accord helped pave the way for a plannedoutput boost at the biggest U.S. exporter.

“It's a victory lap” for Obama, said Gary Chaison, a laborprofessor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Boeing has 80 percent of its $296 billion jetliner backlog frombuyers outside the U.S., making the Chicago-based company pivotalto Obama's plan to double exports in five years. The planemakerplans to increase commercial-jet production by more than 60 percentbetween 2010 and 2014.

Obama's effort to add matching financing is aimed at helpingU.S. companies fend off “unfair advantages” enjoyed by rivals inChina and elsewhere receiving government assistance, according to aWhite House statement. He also will call for extending the lendingauthority of the Ex-Im Bank, which may reach its $100 billionceiling before April.

“Failure to reauthorize the bank will give competitors, likeChina, an unfair edge in global trade, with the costs of decreasesin U.S. exports and good American jobs,” the White House said.

Boeing plans to contribute $742 million to the bank's SupplyChain Financing Program to provide short-term credit to smallersuppliers, according to the bank. Over the last three years thebank supported the export of about 460 Boeing jets.

Boeing and the White House have numerous ties: Chief ExecutiveOfficer Jim McNerney is chairman of the President's Export Council;William Daley left Boeing's board to become Obama's chief of staff;John Bryson, also a Boeing director, became Obama's Commercesecretary in October.

“It is a love-hate relationship,” with the company and the WhiteHouse wanting and needing rapport yet clashing over regulations,Chaison said. “Boeing becomes incredibly symbolic now after thetroubles they've been through with the NLRB.”

NLRB Complaint

The board charged Boeing with violating workers' rights byciting strikes in Washington state as a reason for building a new787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina. Chaison said Obama willassert that the NLRB's suit spurred the contract compromise thatpreserved jobs in Washington state and South Carolina.

“This trip has everything to do with the president's focus onmanufacturing and on increasing our exports and nothing to do” withthe NLRB case, White House press secretary Jay Carney toldreporters yesterday.

Republicans in Congress are pressing an investigation of theboard, particularly after Obama appointed three members while thelawmakers were in recess last month. They say the presidentunlawfully bypassed the Senate to fill the vacancies.

Boeing added more than 11,000 new jobs last year in Washington,where most employees belong to the International Association ofMachinists and Aerospace Workers and the Society of ProfessionalEngineering Employees in Aerospace, and South Carolina, whereworkers rejected unionization.

Obama will speak just north of Seattle at Boeing's plant forwide-body jets. Erected in 1967, it remains the world's biggestbuilding by volume and houses the production lines for the 747jumbo jet, 767, 777 and the new 787 Dreamliner. Air Force One, thepresidential 747, was assembled there.

“The president has embraced U.S. manufacturing, and Boeing is aniconic symbol of U.S. success,” said Harley Shaiken, a laborprofessor at the University of California at Berkeley.

The visit also makes sense for Obama from a fundraisingperspective, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian atRice University in Houston. Washington state is among the fivemost-unionized in the U.S., and Obama plans to attend two events ina Seattle suburb to raise money for his re-election.

Neither the White House nor the planemaker can afford to have apublic feud, so it's in their interest to highlight the positivesof their relationship and forget last year's strains, according toBrinkley and Shaiken.

“Boeing wants a president that's sympathetic to manufacturing,and the president wants a symbol of aiding the economy,” Shaikensaid. “So with that, that's big smiles all around.”

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