Ford expected to receive $250 million loan guarantee for exports

The White House said Ford is able to add the jobs at the Chicago plant because of an injection of $400 million in loan guarantees from the Energy Department to retool their factories for fuel-efficient vehicles.

“This will help Ford export more than 200,000 cars and trucks overseas, and that means more production and more manufacturing jobs right here in the United States of America,” Obama said.

Obama is highlighting the push of potential foreign sales of the Explorer and in the auto industry in general as an avenue for the United States to meet his goal of doubling exports over the next five years.

“We’re tired of just buying from everybody else,” Obama said. “We want to start selling to other people, because we know we can compete.”

Ford was the only automaker that didn’t accept bailout funding from the government during the financial crisis.

Obama has recently been defending the $60 billion in federal funding to the auto industry, which he says saved thousands of jobs when General Motors and Chrysler were nearly bankrupt.

Eric Zimmermann contributed to this report.