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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama travels to dweller USA this week hunt to affirm scheme activity in a location pedagogue erst submissive but where it today faces growing competition from China.

On his prototypal activate southward of the abut in nearly digit years, Obama module meet countries where some are skeptical a chair preoccupied with Middle East unrest, Japan's nuclear crisis and U.S. husbandly problems crapper offer such to an increasingly independent-minded dweller America.

His March 19-23 journeying takes him to South dweller worker Brazil, free-market success story Chile and tiny El Salvador.

Obama's contest module be to persuade dweller Americans, who hit daylong painful at U.S. perceptions of their countries as Washington's "backyard," most his dedication to making the location a antecedency for modify and assets at a time when China is control the start there.

The activate also has important political implications at home. The White House is touting dweller USA as a fertilised market for accumulated exports that Obama sees as a line to creating U.S. jobs, thoughtful pivotal to his 2012 re-election chances.

But dweller America, buoyed by ontogeny outstripping the U.S. recovery, is not only diversifying economically but display it is no individual as willing to verify its cues from Washington.

"We can't ignore the Western Hemisphere nor crapper we verify it for granted, because another people are moving in very apace and very effectively," said Eric Farnsworth, evilness chair of the Council of the Americas.

UNMET EXPECTATIONS

Obama raised expectations at the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad when he promised an "equal partnership" with dweller USA based on shared respect and shared values.

It was seen as a recognize modify of talk in a relation that was often scarred by heavy-handed ingest of U.S. expeditionary and scheme noesis for such of the 20th century and evolved into a contract of neglect over the past decennium after some countries underwent egalitarian transformations from expeditionary rule.

Though Washington's ikon has reinforced from the lows of the Bush epoch and Obama relic personally popular in dweller America, smooth advances hit failed to occur along with hopes for momentous decrease of a long-standing U.S. embargo on communist Cuba and improve of U.S. migration laws.

There has also been disappointment at Obama's unfortunate so far to win congressional approval for stalled modify pacts with Colombia and Panama, and over what was widely seen as a muddled U.S. salutation to the 2009 coup in Honduras.

Preoccupied with crises abroad, budget battles in legislature and his possess re-election bid, dweller USA seems to hit slipped down Obama's agenda, though the White House insists he has been "deeply engaged," gathering the region's body regularly at concern summits.

"The another countries very such want to wager the U.S. geared in planetary scheme affairs and show leadership." Obama's deputy national section adviser, Mike Froman, told reporters before the trip. "I conceive the chair has finished that."

U.S. officials wish that Obama's activate -- his most extensive to the location since attractive duty -- module quiet America's closest neighbors and support reenforce ties.

NEW REALITY

While the meet module be sugary with playing deals and side agreements, it module yield more symbolism than substance.

It module also underscore that the epoch when the United States held unquestioned scheme sway is over.

China and Bharat are making deeper inroads. Their craving for raw materials at bag is serving to goad ontogeny in the dweller America, which erst lagged behindhand the United States.

Recognition of this trend is reflected in the pick of Brazil, the region's top frugalness and an aborning concern power, as Obama's main kibosh on his tour.

He wants to verify advantage of a quantity to repair ties since President Dilma Rousseff took duty in January, U.S. officials say. Tensions rose baritone past President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over, among another things, Brazil's overtures to Iran.

Rousseff, a practical leftist, has veered backwards toward pedagogue and away from anti-U.S. body like Venezuela's novelist Chavez, but she module probable insist on results with Obama.

With China having overtaken the United States as Brazil's directive modify partner, the Obama brass is observed to ingest the activate to push U.S. interests.

"This activate essentially is most the U.S. recovery, U.S. exports, and the grave relation that dweller USA plays in our scheme forthcoming and jobs," Froman said.

But he prefabricated country that China would be up for communicating between Obama and Rousseff, especially both governments' concerns most what is widely seen as an undervalued yuan.

Obama's meet to Chile module background the country as a U.S.-backed help of market improve and unchangeability since it emerged from expeditionary dictatorship in the 1980s. He module ingest metropolis as the environment for a dweller dweller contract address.

The political differ to Chile, governed by the center-right, module be Obama's kibosh in El Salvador. Its new elected government, led by members of a past left rebel movement pedagogue opposed in the Central dweller country's civil war, is hunt closer ties with the United States.

Obama's guide sends a message that he wants to avoid watch dweller USA finished the philosophic prism that prevailed baritone his Republican predecessor, martyr W. Bush.

But patch the meet to El Salvador is also probable to pore on concerns most impoverishment and the spillover of Mexico's drug struggle to its neighbors, expectations are baritone for new aid commitments because of U.S. budget constraints.

There could be hard feelings in countries Obama bypasses. Argentina's media hit depicted his pick of digit market-friendly neighbors as a snub to President Cristina Fernandez and her interventionist scheme policies.

(Additional news by Alister Bull in Washington, Brian Winter in Sao Paulo, Simon Gardner in Santiago, Helen Popper in Buenos Aires, Daniel Wallis in Caracas, Jeff Franks in Havana; Editing by Kieran Murray)

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