President Barack Obama amplified his campaign's recent attack against Mitt Romney on Friday, calling out his Republican rival over reports that Romney's former private equity firm advised companies on outsourcing American jobs overseas.
"We do not need an outsourcing pioneer in the Oval Office. We need a president who will fight for American jobs and fight for American manufacturing. That's what my plan will do," Obama said Friday at a campaign rally in Tampa, Florida.
Earlier in the day, his campaign lit up with criticism against Romney after the Washington Post reported that Bain Capital, a firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and left in 1999, had invested in multiple companies that "specialized in relocating jobs." Several of the firms built new facilities "in low-wage countries," especially in Asia.
"(Bain) owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission," the report said.
In his speech Friday, Obama pounced on the report: "Today it was reported in the Washington Post that the companies his firm owned were pioneers in the outsourcing of American jobs to places like China and India. Pioneers!"
Obama's remarks came in a spirited speech to a fired up crowd at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, the same town to host the Republican National Convention in August.
Democrats, particularly Obama's campaign, have pounded Romney over his history at Bain, using the firm as a way to frame the candidate as an out of touch businessman more interested in making profits for the wealthy than creating jobs for the masses.
Arguing that Romney uses his corporate experience as his calling card on the campaign trail, Obama said Friday that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has the wrong ideas about how to turn the economy around.
"The challenge that we have faced for over a decade is that bigger profits haven't led to better jobs, bigger profits haven't led to higher incomes," Obama said.
His senior campaign strategist, David Axelrod, described the report earlier in the day as a "significant moment" in the campaign, signaling Obama's team may continue to use the new Bain offense against Romney in the coming days.
Responding to the report, Team Romney called the article a "fundamentally flawed story," arguing it fails to point out the difference between "domestic outsourcing versus offshoring."
Outsourcing, the campaign argues, is a common practice and can occur domestically without sending jobs overseas. Offshoring, on the other hand, involves shifting work out of house and overseas.
"Mitt Romney spent 25 years in the real world economy so he understands why jobs come and they go," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul in statement. "As President, he will implement policies that make it easier and more attractive for companies to create jobs here at home."
A spokesman for Bain Capital also responded to the report Friday, simply pointing to its successful ventures since its founding.
"Bain Capital's business model has always been to build great companies and improve their operations," the company said in a statement. "We have helped the 350 companies in which we have invested, which include over 100 start-up businesses, produce $80 billion of revenue growth in the United States while growing their revenues well over twice as fast as both the S&P and the U.S. economy over the last 28 years."
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