GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Monday jabbed President Obama over filing suit against China while attempting to curb the advantage President Obama enjoys among Hispanic voters.
“The President may think that announcing new trade cases less than two months from Election Day will distract from his record, but the American businesses and workers struggling on an uneven playing field know better,” Romney said during remarks before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, Calif. ”If I’d known all it took to get him to take action was to run an ad citing his inaction on China’s cheating, I would have run one long ago.”
Earlier Monday, President Obama filed suit through the World Trade Organization against China, charging the country with providing illegal subsidies to persuade companies to ship jobs overseas.
Romney also worked to establish key differences between his policies and those of the president, honing in on his intention to help struggling small businesses.
“[President Obama] wants government to tax more and regulate more because he believes government can do a better job [at creating jobs] than you can,” Romney said. “I believe in you. I believe you can do a better job than government.”
While his numbers have been less than stellar among Hispanics, Romney again tried to appeal to his audience by pointing to what then-candidate Obama promised and what the president delivered.
“Candidate Obama said that one of his highest priorities would be to fix immigration in his first year in office,” Romney said. “Despite his party having majorities in both houses of Congress, the president didn’t even offer up a bill.
Democrats in Congress have tried but failed to pass the DREAM Act – a bill aimed at paving a way to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants – on several occasions.
In June, President Obama sidestepped Congress and issued an Executive Order putting an end to the deportation of DREAM-eligible immigrants.
As a result, undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. before they were 16 and are younger than 30, served in the military or were successful students, and who pose no criminal or security threat became eligible for a two-year deferral from being deported.
In an earlier poll by Latino Decisions, Romney was sputtering at 26 percent support from Hispanics. Though the gap between President Obama and Romney among Hispanics continues to be overwhelming, Romney did gain some ground after the RNC in Tampa and now holds 30 percent support compared to Obama’s 64 percent.
