Bush hits back at economy critics

President George W. Bush, under attack in his re-election campaign over the failure to create new jobs, said Saturday that measures urged by his Democratic rival for the White House would lead to "economic disaster".
Bush again defended his handling of the economy through recession, the September 11, 2001 attacks, corporate scandals and the Iraq war but admitted that some industries and US regions are "lagging behind" in job creation.
The president said in his weekly radio address he had "acted boldly" in response with huge tax cuts and other measures to encourage investment.
As a result "America has the fastest-growing major industrialised economy in the world.
"American productivity has grown faster over the last two years than at any time in more than 50 years. More manufacturers have been reporting rising activity than at any point in the last 20 years."
The 5.6 percent unemployment rate is below the average for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he added.
But jobs and a growing public deficit are two of the weak spots seen by Democratic presidential contender John Kerry in the Bush campaign for the November 2 election.
About two million jobs have been lost in the United States under the Bush presidency, many of them to cheap labour countries, and replacements are not being found fast enough.
Bush turned on the Democratic camp however.
"Some politicians in Washington see this new challenge, and they want to respond in old, ineffective ways. They want to increase federal taxes - yet punishing families and small businesses is not a job-creation strategy," said the president.
"They want to build up trade walls, and isolate America from the rest of the world - but economic isolationism would threaten the millions of good American jobs that depend on exports.
"These tired, old policies of tax and spend, and economic isolationism, are a recipe for economic disaster."
Bush said America had to "pursue a confident policy of trade" and cut red tape and taxes to lure foreign companies to the United States.
"Millions of American jobs depend on our goods being sold overseas; and foreign-owned companies employ millions of Americans here at home.
"We owe those workers our best efforts to make sure other nations open up their markets, and keep them open. We want the entire world to buy American, because the best products in the world carry the label 'Made in the USA'.