US President Barack Obama has said he did not run for "this office" to get back to where America was and asserted that the country will "thrive again", leaving behind an economy which is "built to last".
"I did not run for this office just to get back to where we were. I ran for this office to get us to where we need to be. And I promise you we will get there," Obama said yesterday at the Rolls-Royce Crosspointe in Petersburg, Virginia.
Obama is seeking re-election in the November presidential elections.
"Some of these challenges may take a year; some may take one term; some may take a decade. But we're going to get there because when we work together, we know what we're capable of. We've got the tools. We've got the know-how. We've got the toughness to overcome any obstacle.
"And when we come together and combine our creativity and our optimism and our willingness to work hard, and if we're harnessing our brainpower and our manpower, our horsepower, I promise you we will thrive again, we will get to where we need to go, and we will leave behind an economy that is built to last. We will make this another American century," said the US President.
Observing that for generations of Americans, manufacturing has been the ticket for the middle class, Obama said that was why one of the first decisions he made as president was to stand by manufacturing, to stand by the American auto industry when it was on the brink of collapse.
"The heartbeat of American manufacturing was at stake, and so were more than a million jobs. And today the American auto industry is coming back, and GM is number one in the world again, and Ford is investing billions in American plants and factories. And together, over the past two and a half years, the entire auto industry has added more than 200,000 jobs,"
