We asked Senator Charles Grassley to grade President Barack Obama's performance (close your ears Sasha and Malia) and the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee was a bit of a tough schoolmaster.

"He's still learning an awful lot," Grassley said at a Reuters Washington Summit.

But Obama gets a D on foreign policy, a C on domestic policy, and an F on trade (ouch!)

We asked him to explain the grading.

"If you go to class, college, and you don't do anything you get an F," Grassley said on trade. He noted that Obama has put a 35 percent duty on tires from China, which the senator believed was not a good idea, but he would have been willing to overlook that if the president was pushing forward on trade agreements.

And why the D on foreign policy?

"He's taken a month to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan," Grassley said.

"And what sort of a signal is that sending around the world when the commander-in-chief of the biggest economy and the biggest military in the world, the policeman for the world, is wondering whether or not he wants to back up the general he appointed to study it, and something that worked in Iraq, and he's not making up his mind," Grassley said.

http://www.reuters.com/summit/Washington09

Photo credit: Reuters/Johnathan Ernst (Grassley at Reuters Washington Summit)

BEIJING - Does having “a Chinese face” help two top U.S. officials in hard bargaining on energy and trade issues with the Chinese?

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose grandfather came to the United States from China, told reporters in Beijing not necessarily so.

But Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed pride in Locke and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s ancestory when he met with them on Thursday.

“For both secretaries of Chinese heritage, I am particularly glad to see you today. I want to extend my congratulations to the two of you for taking very important positions in the U.S. administration,” Wen said at the start of a meeting on clean energy cooperation between the world’s biggest emitters greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Later, at a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, a Chinese reporter asked Locke and Chu whether “your Chinese face and your Chinese origin” provided an edge in negotiations with the Chinese.

Locke, a former Washington state governor who has visited China dozens of time and helped arrange President Hu Jintao’s visit to Seattle in 2006, told Reuters earlier this week his Chinese ancestry did “help open some doors” in Beijing.  At the press conference, he played down any benefit.

“I don’t know that being a Chinese-American gives us a particular advantage,” Locke said. “We represent the president of the United States and the American people … I’m proud of my Chinese heritage and the contribution of China for thousands of year, but I’m 100 percent American.”

Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist brought in by President Barack Obama to help raise public awareness about the threat from global warming, said what helped most was an understanding of the difficulties both sides face in combatting global warming and “showing compassion” for that.

Locke and Chu travelled with another prominent Chinese-American member of Obama’s administration, Christopher Lu.

“I know the name and also the importance of his position,” Wen said when Locke introduced the two.

Lu, a law school classmate of Obama, works in the White House as assistant to the president in charge of the Cabinet.
“The three of us are the highest-ranking Chinese-Americans in President Obama’s administration,” Locke told Wen.

“We’re proud of our great country, America. But we’re also proud of our ancestoral homeland,” Locke said.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Greg Baker/Pool (Wen Jiabao meets with Locke (C) and Chu (L) in Beijing)

Call it the Congressional version of the lightning round.

Ron Kirk, the Obama administration's choice for U.S. Trade Representative, had a rapid-fire confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Monday that lasted no longer than 45 minutes.

"Exhilarating," was how Kirk, a former Dallas mayor, described the quick experience, fittingly, in one word.

Senators had to compress the session to attend a vote on amendments to the omnibus spending bill.

Kirk started off by telling senators "It's been a long and strange journey getting to this point," but didn't even make it through a shortened version of prepared remarks before he was urged by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus to wrap it up.

"I'm going to ask about four questions, and if you don't mind, I'd like about 45-second answers," Baucus told Kirk. He proceeded to ask how Kirk would promote bipartisanship on trade issues, enforce the U.S.-Canada softwood lumber deal, eliminate sanitary and phytosanitary barrier for farm goods, and whether a bilateral trade agreement with Panama was closer to passage than pending deals with Colombia and South Korea.

Baucus alloted Kirk "23 seconds" to explain how he would build support for trade among America's middle class, which views deals as bad for the country, and later, "15 seconds" to talk about how he would enforce deals.

The Doha round of World Trade Organization talks, now dragging into its eighth year? No questions.

Baucus, along with Republican senators Chuck Grassley and John Cornyn, mentioned errors in Kirk's tax return, but none of the senators used their precious seconds of time to question Kirk about his omissions.

Cornyn, who defeated Kirk in a 2002 race for the Senate, praised  Kirk's record in Dallas and called him "the right man" to be U.S. trade representative despite the tax issue.

--By Roberta Rampton and Doug Palmer

Photo: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang (Kirk testifies at his confirmation hearing)

Good day you hosers!

President Barack Obama takes off to the Great White North today on his first foreign jaunt as president. Trade will top the agenda in Ottawa as Obama seeks to ease concerns about protectionism. He’ll also discuss the war in Afghanistan and clean energy technology with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Canadian Parlaiment, but the one-day trip leaves little time to get into details. Too bad, eh?

Obama’s foreclosure plan should start showing results as soon as next month, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chairman Shelia Bair said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in Poland, seeking help from allies for the war in Afghanistan. The United States is sending an additional 17,000 troops, but has now lost its last remaining air base in Central Asia after a “Yankee Go Home” vote was approved by Kyrgyzstan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is headed to Seoul to deal with an increasingly angry North Korea, which has said it is ready for war with South Korean and has accused the United States of planning a nuclear attack.

Unemployment claims are at a record high, according to Labor Department data released Thursday morning, but at least things have leveled off for the moment — the number of new claims was essentially the same last week as it was the week before. Does this qualify as good news?

photo: REUTERS/Shaun Best

NEW PARIS, Penn. - What is the biggest competition for an apple orchard owner in rural Pennsylvania?
 
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin thought she knew the answer when talking to Matthew Boyer of Boyer Orchards.
 
“So is your competition imports from China?” Palin asked Boyer, as she stood in a barn in front of bushels of all different kinds of freshly picked apples at the family-owned orchard.
 
Not quite.
 
While it’s true that China is a huge apple producer and the United States’ share of world exports continues to decline, competition from China wasn’t Boyer’s biggest concern.
 
Boyer told Palin he was more worried about apples from Washington state, which produces some 60 percent of the apples grown in the United States.
 
In fact, the issue on Boyer’s mind was immigration.
 
Boyer employs migrants to pick his apples, and it is becoming harder to find people willing and able to do the work.
 
“We need workers. We can’t get any local person for it. It’s hard work,” he said.
 
“It’s increasingly difficult to find legal help. People don’t understand this immigration issue.”
 
Palin quickly turned the conversation to one of her preferred topics — the need to cut taxes, especially for small business owners.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - There was a sharp exchange among patrons during Barack Obama’s visit to a barbecue restaurant on Sunday, highlighting the strong emotions the U.S. presidential race is stirring in the final weeks of the campaign.

Obama stopped by Cape Fear BBQ in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to pick up some chicken, collards and baked beans and court voters in this traditionally Republican state.

Some patrons cheered his arrival while others looked on with curiosity and surprise. One woman yelled, “Socialist, Socialist, Socialist — get out of here.” Obama was across the room at the time and did not appear to hear Diane Fanning, 54, who was among several patrons who had just come by after services at the local Presbyterian church. She said she was annoyed that the Illinois senator had stopped in at the restaurant that she regularly visits.

Obama supporter Cecelia Hayslip, 61, responded to Fanning’s comments by saying, “At least he’s not a warmonger.”

Lenox Bramble, 76, isn’t an Obama supporter but he also was bothered by Fanning’s comment. “Be civil, be courteous,” he said.

Later, Bramble and his wife, Kit, seemed to find some common ground with Obama when he said he shared their concerns about the loss of textile jobs to other countries and underscored his pledge to try to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Act.

They later said that while they found Obama likeable, they were not going to vote for him. Lenox finds Obama too inexperienced while Kit said she had been a conservative Republican since Barry Goldwater’s 1964 candidacy and wasn’t about to change.

Obama had more success with first-time voter Mike Long, 33, who talked to the candidate about health care. Long said he had gone from being less than 50 percent likely to vote for Obama to being 98 percent certain he would back the Democrat.

Obama later walked over to Fanning’s table and extended his hand to her but she did not shake it. 

North Carolina is among some traditional Republican states that have turned competitive in recent weeks. George W. Bush won the state handily in both 2000 and 2004, racking up more than 12-point wins each time. But an average of recent polls on the Web site RealClearPoltics showed Obama with slight 1.3 percent lead in the state.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young - U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama makes a campaign stop at a restaurant in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Oct. 19, 2008.