Obama to deliver economic speech in New Orleans

President Obama will head to New Orleans next Friday for an event on the economy, the White House said Friday.

The president will “discuss the importance of taking measures to grow the economy and create jobs by increasing our exports,” press secretary Jay Carney said.

The event comes amid administration efforts to spur economic growth by advocating for infrastructure improvement and foreign investment.

{mosads}On Thursday, Obama told financiers and entrepreneurs in Washington that the federal government was going to take a greater role in attracting capital from foreign countries.

The president said federal departments and agencies would begin working together to provide international investors a single point of contact who could help them navigate the myriad of federal, state, and local rules that regulate business in the United States. 

“As a country, we don’t always make our case in a coordinated way that links our teams overseas to the right officials in Washington,” Obama said.

Both Obama and Vice President Biden have also pressed Congress to fund infrastructure improvements across the nation’s ports in recent months, arguing that improving shipping capacity would boost the U.S. economy.

Biden will travel to Panama in late November to tour an expansion project of the Panama Canal. Last month, he visited Baltimore; Charleston, S.C.; and Savannah, Ga. to tout projects designed to widen shipyards in order to accommodate new supertankers.