President Barack Obama travels to middle America on Jan. 26 a day after his State of the Union address, in a bid to show how his policies are helping revitalize the economy.
The trip comes a day after Obama urged the United States to reinvent itself and unite to survive in a fast-changing global economy powered by rising giants like India and China.
Obama was set to arrive at mid-morning in Wisconsin, where he will tour three factories that the White House says are growing thanks to tax incentives that encourage companies to invest in "green" energy.
In Manitowoc, 185 miles north of Chicago, Obama was scheduled to visit Orion Energy Systems, a power technology company that according to the White House "designs, manufactures and deploys energy efficiency and renewable energy technology for commercial and industrial business."
Obama planned to tour the site and talk to employees about the economy, then visit a wind turbine factory and an aluminum plant where managers expect to increase their work force this year by 30%.
Separately, Vice President Joe Biden is to visit a factory that builds high-end electric batteries mainly for "green" vehicles in the state of Indiana.
The visit comes after Obama said in his speech that Americans "need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world."
During his speech before Congress, Obama said the world economic order has changed in a generation and called his country to invest and innovate to be the challenge posed by globalization and the rise industrial countries like China and India.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2011
