U.S. President Barack Obama has chosen energy executive John Bryson to lead the Commerce Department, putting a businessman at the helm of an agency tasked with boosting U.S. exports and promoting American business around the world.                  

    U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated John Bryson for commerce secretary, a choice that drew plaudits from business and environmental groups, reflecting his uncommon career in both worlds. But Senate Republicans threatened to block confirmation of the nominee over a trade dispute.

    “That’s the expertise that will help us create new jobs and make America more competitive in the global economy,” Obama said during the announcement at the White House, with Bryson and the current Commerce Secretary Gary Locke at his side.

    Obama’s announcement capped his search for an executive to add a business outlook to his inner circle. The president said Bryson’s diverse background recommended him to lead the widely varied Commerce Department, and particularly to spur clean energy projects and American exports generally.

    For nearly two decades until 2008, Bryson, 67, was chairman and chief executive of a Southern California electric utility conglomerate, Edison International. Previously he was best known as a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation’s leading environmental organizations.

    His name surfaced after Obama’s election among those under consideration to be energy secretary, a job that went to Steven Chu, Nobel laureate, physicist and fellow proponent of clean energy.

    A Californian, Bryson is on the boards of such old-line corporations as Boeing — where he served with William M. Daley, now the White House chief of staff — and Disney, as well as clean-technology startups like Coda Automotive, a maker of electric cars in Santa Monica, California, and BrightSource Energy, a solar power company in Oakland. An adviser in Jerry Brown’s first stint as California governor in the 1970s, Bryson was the head of the California Public Utilities Commission and the State Water Resources Control Board.

    Groups often at odds with each other were united in praise of Bryson. Endorsement came not only from the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose president, Frances Beinecke, said Bryson’s career “underscores the strong linkage between economic and environmental progress,” but from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers as well.

    Araceli Ruano, senior vice president and California director of the Center for American Progress, said Bryson is held in high esteem on the West Coast.

    “His service on boards related to everything from foreign affairs to underprivileged youth has not only made him one of the brightest stars in civil society but will serve him well as secretary of commerce,” Ruano said.

    But others questioned whether Bryson’s activism could harm the economy. Senator James Inhofe, a climate change skeptic, vowed to block Bryson’s nomination because he founded a “radical environmental organization.”

    Before Bryson can succeed Locke, who is in line to be ambassador to China now that Jon M. Huntsman Jr. has left for a possible Republican presidential bid, he must win Senate confirmation. And Senate Republicans revived a threat first leveled in March to block any nominee for commerce secretary until Obama submits pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea to Congress for approval of legislation to put them into effect.

    Obama did not allude to the confirmation hurdle in his brief remarks introducing Bryson. But his press secretary, Jay Carney, later repeated the administration’s demand for maintaining the aid to displaced workers, and added: “It would be folly to hold up a nomination so important as the commerce secretary for any reason.”

    Among others Obama was said to have considered was Eric E. Schmidt, chairman of Google, and Ron Kirk, the president’s trade representative.

    An administration official said Bryson was recommended to the White House by more than one person outside the White House.

    In addition to representing U.S. business interests abroad, one of Bryson’s tasks at the Commerce Department would be leading Obama’s plans to double U.S. exports in the next four years. Part of that initiative will depend on creating alternative energy sources in the United States, an effort Obama said Bryson would take a lead role in, given his background in the energy and environmental sectors.

    Bryson is the latest businessman to be brought into the administration’s fold as the White House grapples with ways to shake its reputation as anti-business.

    Private sector leaders have griped about what they see as burdensome new financial and health care regulations, unfriendly tax policies and vast government spending. They were also put off by Obama’s harsh depiction of “fat cat bankers” and “reckless practices,” a label he applied both to Wall Street and to oil giant BP following the Gulf oil spill.

    Graduating from Cleveland High School in Portland, Oregon, in 1961, Bryson received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Yale Law School. In 1970, with other Yale Law graduates, he helped found and served as legal counsel for the national environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council.

    Bryson is also a trustee of the California Institute of Technology, a director of the California Endowment and the W. M. Keck Foundation, and serves on the advisory board of Deutsche Bank Americas. Previously, Bryson served on educational, energy and environmental boards, including as a trustee of Stanford University, a member of a United Nations advisory group on energy and climate change, and head of California’s Public Utilities Commission and its State Water Resources Control Board.

    (SD-Agencies)