* Obama says U.S. losing business unnecessarily
* Says reforms won't jeopardize national security
* Defense Secretary Gates to lay out proposals
(Adds background, comments from manufacturers group; byline)
By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday that updating Cold War-era restrictions on U.S. high-technology exports would help the United States create new jobs and boost economic growth.
"We are losing business opportunities unnecessarily," Obama said in a meeting with outside economic advisers just days before Secretary of Defense Roberts Gates is expected to lay out plans for revamping U.S. export controls.
U.S. manufacturers have long complained they are losing high-tech sales to competitors in Europe and Asia because of cumbersome rules designed when the United States was locked in an ideological battle with the Soviet Union.
"We're also, I actually think, impeding effective monitoring of our national security because if you have export controls across everything you're not spending time focusing on the handful of things that really do touch on sensitive national security," Obama said.
Gates is expected to outline actions the administration will take to update and streamline U.S. export controls on commercial goods with potential military applications in a speech on Tuesday, as well as propose additional reforms it would like Congress to make.
"It's going to be entirely grounded in our national security needs but I think will have a strong potential impact on where we can go in terms of exports," Obama said.
The last congressional effort to revamp U.S. export controls collapsed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
A study done by the Milken Institute for the National Association of Manufacturers estimated that modernizing exports controls would boost real U.S. economic output by $64 billion and create 160,000 manufacturing jobs.
The Obama administration has "been very close-lipped on what they decided," said Catherine Robinson, director of export controls for the manufacturers groups. But "the little we have heard is that they are definitely thinking along the lines of our recommendations."
That hopefully will include changing the "trade culture" within the administration so that the State Department, Defense Department and Commerce Department are working in sync instead of at cross purposes, she said.
Manufacturers would also like a shift from the current "transaction-by-transaction approach" to licensing exports to a system that allows multiple shipments of a high-tech product to the same customer, she said.
Obama was also pressed by business leaders during the meeting to move forward on free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea as a way to boost exports and jobs.
"This is something we believe in and we want to continue to pursue," Obama said, without giving any timetable for action other than to note that "it takes quite a bit of work" to get legislation through Congress.
Editing by John O'Callaghan and Eric Walsh)