US President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed to bat for American businesses around the world to fulfill the ambitious goal of doubling the country's exports in five years.
"The world wants American goods. And my administration is going to go to bat for America's businesses around the world. You should know that," Obama said in his remarks at the closing session of the "Winning the Future Forum on Small Business" in Cleveland, Ohio.
"If we want to win the future, we're going to have to out-innovate, out-educate, out-build, and yes, we are going to have to out-hustle the rest of the world," he said.
"As I said, it's not always easy to project into the future. Sometimes the unknown is scary. But that hasn't stopped any of you. And it hasn't stopped America. We've never taken the easy route. We've always done what's hard. We've been willing to take risks to do big things," Obama said.
"We also get each other's backs, just like you're doing here in Cleveland, because we know that when it comes to America's success, there's no room for division between business and labour and Democrats and Republicans. When it comes to competing for jobs and industries, we are on one team and that is the American team," he said.
"We will rise and fall together. I absolutely believe that. If we keep that in mind, there’s nothing we can't do," said the US President.
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"The truth is that large companies are critically important to our economy. They export. They employ thousands of people. They also provide contracts to small businesses. So there's a little bit of an artificial separation sometimes if large businesses are doing well, then small businesses also have an opportunity for great success," he said earlier at another session of the day-long meeting.
"At the same time," he argued, "small businesses that grow into medium-sized and large businesses, that's the key to the future, because it's the new products, it's the new services, things that nobody else thought of before that are going to help absorb all the talented Americans out there who are looking for careers and the large companies, there's only going to be so much additional employment that they add, partly because they're getting more and more efficient."