Excerpt: The White House announcement Tuesday that the United States has launched the beginning of a formal complaint over Beijing’s hold on rare earth materials doesn’t only take aim at China. Made just eight months before Election Day, the move has another high-profile target in mind: Mitt Romney. …Obama has always had a weakness with those voters – he won just 40 percent of them against John McCain in 2008 – but his campaign has signaled it believes some of them otherwise inclined to back the GOP nominee might be reluctant to support Romney. That helps explain their move Tuesday to blunt some of Romney’s criticism. The move has a dual benefit for Obama, according to Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council. It can make him look tough on China but avoid angering the business community at the same time, which is much less alarmed by submitting complaints to the World Trade Organization than declaring China a currency manipulator. In effect, the president is threading the needle between competing interests.”Most responsible incumbents do whatever they can to protect themselves from that charge,” said Reinsch, who called Romney’s position on trade with China “baffling.” “What Obama has done, which makes sense, is to pursue a much tougher line on enforcement.”
