FOXNews.com: Obama sets out on first 2012 campaign bus tour with jobs report looming

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Obama sets out on first 2012 campaign bus tour with jobs report looming Jul 5th 2012, 12:13 President Obama was setting out Thursday on his first bus tour of the 2012 campaign, heading to vital battleground states to defend his economic policies as well as his decision to bail out U.S. automakers.  But as Obama visits the Rust Belt with stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania over the next two days, top Mitt Romney surrogates will be hitting the same regions to counter Obama's election-year narrative. The Romney operation is ready to pounce, ahead of a key monthly jobs report that will be released on Day 2 of Obama's tour.  Obama's 250-mile "Betting on America" bus tour is taking him through several northern Ohio communities where he received strong support in 2008. The tour also will take him into western Pennsylvania, with a stop in Pittsburgh.  On Friday, the Labor Department will release June's employment report. The stakes are high for a president trying to convince the country that it is not sliding back toward recession -- the May report showed employers adding the fewest number of jobs in a year, resulting in an uptick in the jobless rate to 8.2 percent. In a glimmer of good news, a survey released Thursday by ADP showed businesses in the private sector added 176,000 jobs last month, marking an improvement over May. The Labor Department will offer a more complete picture of June hiring on Friday.  Both Ohio and Pennsylvania have unemployment rates below the national rate. So far, Obama is polling ahead of Romney in most surveys from those two presidential battlegrounds -- he won both states four years ago.  But the Republican presidential candidate will be fighting hard for the territory, recognizing their historical significance. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio.  For the Ohio leg of the trip, Romney has dispatched Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to visit the regions on Obama's itinerary ahead of the president's arrival.  They will "emphasize the gap between what President Obama said he would accomplish and his lack of results on jobs, health care and the debt," a Romney spokesman told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Obama has released new advertising questioning Romney's commitment to keeping jobs in America while pointing to his decision to rescue U.S. automakers, a major employer in Ohio.  Obama will deliver his first address Thursday in Maumee, Ohio, before traveling to Sandusky and Parma. The bus tour starts a new phase of Obama's re-election campaign as he takes a more retail-oriented approach before the September convention in Charlotte, N.C. It follows a six-state bus trip by Romney through the Midwest last month that included stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  The president's campaign has spent nearly $16 million in television advertising in Ohio through late June, while the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA Action has spent about $2.7 million, according to officials who track ad buys. Romney's campaign has spent about $5 million, but a series of GOP-leaning outside groups have spent another $8 million, helping the Republican blunt Obama's message.  The president's itinerary takes him across the northern manufacturing belt of Ohio, which has felt the recession's sting perhaps more acutely than other parts of the state. During the stop in Maumee, outside Toledo, Obama is expected to discuss an unfair trade complaint against China that his administration was to file Thursday with the World Trade Organization. The complaint centers on new Chinese duties on U.S.-made cars, including the Jeep Wrangler, which is made in Toledo, a senior administration official said. The U.S. believes the duties violate international trade rules, said the official, who requested anonymity in order to speak ahead of the president's announcement.  China has at times become a focal point in the presidential campaign. Romney has accused Obama of being too soft on China, while the Obama campaign has accused Romney of outsourcing jobs to China when he ran the private equity firm Bain Capital.  Romney's team counters that Obama has presided over a series of broken promises on unemployment, the economy and the federal deficit.  The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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