President Barack Obama's re-election campaign released new ads Tuesday accusing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of sending American jobs overseas during his days as a business leader.
The ads come on the heels of a report in the Washington Post last week stating Romney invested in companies that were "pioneers" in outsourcing during his days as the head of Bain Capital.
"Romney's never stood up to China. All he's ever done is send them our jobs," the new Obama for America ads state. The ads will air in the key swing states of Virginia, Iowa and Ohio.
The original Post article from Friday, said, "Romney's financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India," citing information from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
"A Washington Post examination of securities filings shows the extent of Bain's investment in firms that specialized in helping other companies move or expand operations overseas," the article added. "While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on."
The article was a major blow to the Romney campaign, which has repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for not focusing closely enough on the economy and for encouraging the outsourcing of American jobs.
The Romney campaign quickly shot back against the article, saying it didn't differentiate between "domestic outsourcing," or the practice of contracting work outside of your own company (to other American firms operating either at home or abroad) and "offshoring," or what most Americans think of when they think "outsourcing."
"If President Obama had even half of Mitt Romney's record on jobs, he'd be running on it. But President Obama has the worst record on jobs and the economy of any president in modern history, which is why he is running a campaign based on distractions, not solutions," Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul said in a statement Tuesday.
The campaign added Bain outsourced work to other domestic companies and did not "pioneer" offshoring, as the Post article stated.
Additionally, conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute said the Bain jobs, such as those in the customer service sector, that did move overseas were positions meant to deal with international customers.
But at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Monday, Obama overlooked the differentiation, stating, "You cannot make this stuff up...If you're a worker whose jobs went overseas — you don't need someone who is going to explain to you the difference between outsourcing and offshoring. You need somebody who's going to wake up every day and fight for American jobs."
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