Bush Parts Ways With Aide on Job Losses; 'We Need to Act In This Country'
President Bush, visiting this industrial state to tout his prescriptions for employment growth, distanced himself from his chief economist, who this week spoke approvingly of jobs moving overseas.</br></br>The president, speaking Thursday at a high school here, did not mention the aide by name but expressed his concern about the expatriation of jobs. "There are people looking for work because jobs have gone overseas," he said. "And we need to act in this country. We need to act to make sure there are more jobs at home, and people are more likely to retain a job."</br></br>On Monday, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in releasing the annual Economic Report of the President that the "offshoring" of U.S. service jobs is "the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about" for centuries. "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," he told reporters. "More things are tradable than were tradable, in the past and that's a good thing."</br></br>The report, similarly, said that "when a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than make or provide it domestically."</br></br>Several economists, including some Democrats, have defended Mankiw, a Harvard economist, for speaking the economic truth. But his remarks have become a political liability for the president. Even House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), a Bush ally, joined the criticism Wednesday.