Obama heads to Asia, hopes to deliver on jobs

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama leaves on Friday on a trip to Asia he hopes will lead to more U.S. exports and jobs, three days after his Democratic Party sustained big election losses tied to the weak economy.

Obama will visit India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan on a 10-day trek blending trade talk and other economic diplomacy with assurances to Asian allies worried by an increasingly assertive China. In India, Obama will attend a meeting along with U.S. business leaders. He will announce a “comprehensive partnership” including economic ties in Indonesia, attend a G20 summit of global economic powers in Seoul and participate in an Asia-Pacific economic forum in Yokohama, Japan.“I’m going to be leaving tomorrow for India, and the primary purpose is to take a bunch of U.S. companies and open up markets so that we can sell in Asia, in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and we can create jobs here in the United States of America,” Obama told reporters after a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday.

Obama may get a last dose of bad economic news just before his departure, with the release of the government’s closely watched monthly employment report expected to show anemic jobs growth in October. U.S. unemployment is now 9.6 percent and has hovered at about that level for months.