WASHINGTON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - The United States needs to follow the example of major competitors like Germany and China that have used exports to propel economic growth, a top White House official said on Wednesday.
With U.S. unemployment still near 10 percent, President Barack Obama has increasingly touted trade as a way to generate jobs without requiring new federal spending that would add to the huge U.S. budget deficit.
"We're going to grow our way out of this and exports are going to be an important component of that. For that, all patriotic Americans can agree. Because the American economy has never taken a back seat to anybody and we are not about to start now," White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said in a video posted on the White House website.
Obama, whose party took a beating in last week's congressional election, has carried the export message on his current trip to Asia. He has already visited India and Indonesia and will also stop in South Korea and Japan.
Earlier this year, Obama set a goal of doubling U.S. exports to $3.14 trillion dollars by the end of 2014.
"That would be a significant increase. In fact, the biggest increase that any country has ever had. But we believe that we can do it," Goolsbee said.
For most of the last 10 years, the United States depended "almost entirely" on increasing consumption to fuel economic growth while competitors like Germany and China "were putting greater and greater focus on exporting," he said. (Reporting by Doug Palmer; editing by Cynthia Osterman)