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.