Cleveland ? President Bush on Wednesday vigorously defended his economic and trade policies, crediting them with lifting America from the throes of recession into “the fastest-growing major industrialized economy in the world.”

In an address to a convention of female entrepreneurs in economically hard-hit Ohio, Bush blasted the field of Democratic presidential candidates who spent the last two months blaming his economic policies for the growing trend of “outsourcing,” or sending U.S. jobs overseas.

Ohio is considered a crucial swing state in November’s presidential election, in which jobs, the economy and trade are the big issues. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio. Bush’s father lost the state in 1992, largely because voters perceived him as being out of touch on economic issues. America’s payroll jobs have shrunk by more than 2 million since this President Bush took office.

The Bush campaign puts heavy emphasis on Ohio. Wednesday was Bush’s 15th visit there as president. He delivered a dual message to a state whose 6.2 percent unemployment rate is higher than the national average of 5.6 percent and which has lost more than 200,000 jobs — almost two-thirds in manufacturing — since 2001.

Without naming Sen. John Kerry, the apparent Democratic presidential nominee, Bush told the audience that “politicians in Washington” want to respond to economic and trade problems in “old ways.”

“That old policy of tax-and-spend is the enemy of job creation,” Bush said. “The old policy of economic isolationism is a recipe for economic disaster. America has moved beyond that tired, defeatist mindset, and we’re not going back.”

Kerry, campaigning in Chicago on Wednesday, said America has suffered economically from Bush’s tax cuts and called for rolling back the tax cuts for Americans who earn more than $200,000 a year.

Kerry, like Bush, supports the North American Free Trade Agreement and similar pacts, but he would add a 120-day period to review each agreement’s impact on America and would insist on adding labor and environmental terms to future trade pacts. Kerry denies he’s a protectionist or isolationist.

The president said his tax cuts and trade policies were responsible for steering the country out of the recession.

President Bush addresses the Women's Entrepeneurship conference in Cleveland. Bush traveled Wednesday to the state, a key election battleground, to tout his economic agenda.

“We have faced challenge after challenge during the past three years, and we’re overcoming them all,” Bush said. “Inflation is low, interest rates are low, manufacturing activity is up, and homeownership is at an all-time high. The unemployment rate today is lower than the unemployment rates in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.”

Sounding much like former President Clinton, Bush extolled the virtues of free trade while emphasizing that “we have a responsibility in government to create an environment that increases more jobs and helps people find the skills to fill those jobs.” His budget for fiscal 2005 proposes spending $23 billion for job training and employment assistance.

Bush hailed free trade and U.S. investment by foreign companies, saying they create American jobs.

“More than 900 foreign facilities employ people here in the state of Ohio. … Ten percent of Honda’s international workforce lives in this state. About 16,000 Ohioans work for Honda with good, high-paying jobs,” Bush said. “And that’s not counting the people who work at 165 different Ohio companies that supply Honda with parts and material.”