WASHINGTON (AP):

President Barack Obama will visit the headquarters of sports apparel giant Nike in the western state of Oregon today, to make his trade policy pitch as he struggles to win over Democrats for what could be the last major legislative push of his presidency.

But in choosing the giant sneaker and athletic wear company as his backdrop, Obama has stirred a hornets' nest.

Nike, a major exporter, employs more than 8,500 workers in Oregon, many in well-paying design, research or marketing jobs. But of Nike's slightly more than 1 million, factory contract workers, more than nine out of ten are in Asia, with the largest number in low-wage Vietnam.

"It is a perverse place to try to go and sell a trade agreement that the American public thinks would make it easier to offshore our jobs and push down our wages," said Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

trade negotiating

For Obama, the trade-dependent Pacific Northwest is a natural place to make his case for trade negotiating authority and to promote a 12-nation, Trans-Pacific trade agreement. Congress is debating whether to give Obama so-called fast-track authority to complete that and other trade deals. Obama's toughest sell is with his own Democratic allies, who fear the loss of American jobs and weakened financial and environmental rules.

Nike, with its massive outsourcing of manufacturing, provides Obama with an opportunity to talk about thew labour standards he is seeking to enforce with trade partners, particularly Vietnam, where the US concedes worker rights protections fall short of international standards. Of the 11 countries the US is negotiating with in the Trans-Pacific talks, Nike has contract factories in seven of them.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the stop at Nike will "illustrate how a responsible trade agreement that includes enforceable labour and environmental standards would strongly benefit middle-class families and the American economy."

Today's visit has a touch of gratitude as well. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has been the biggest trade advocate among Democrats and was a key figure in getting fast-track legislation out of the Senate Finance Committee with a bipartisan vote.

The effort has prompted pickets at his Senate offices and at his Portland house.