Washington, Feb 13: Under pressure from Republicans, one of President George W. Bush's top economic advisers sought to defuse an election-year controversy by saying he did not intend to voice support for shifting US jobs overseas. ''My lack of clarity left the wrong impression that I praised the loss of US jobs,'' Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert.
With political concern about unemployment heating up ahead of the November presidential election, critics have seized on Mankiw's characterization earlier this week of ''outsourcing'' by US companies as ''something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run”.
Bureau Report