President Obama's and Mitt Romney's campaigns have two dramatically different readings of a heavily disputed ad airing in the battleground state of Ohio that suggests auto companies General Motors and Chrysler are planning to ship jobs overseas.

A closer look at the history behind the ad, and Romney's similar statements on the campaign trail, show how a fairly routine business story became the dominant political football in the final days of the campaign, as both candidates stake their claim to Ohio with the president guarding a slight lead in the polls.

"Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China," the Romney ad says. "Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."

Romney also said on the campaign trail in Ohio on Oct. 25 that he had learned from a news story that day that Jeep "is thinking of moving all production to China."

The ad started running a few days later on Oct. 28.

Chrysler has vehemently denied the ad's suggestion that adding Jeep production facilities in China will cost U.S. jobs. The company's CEO said this week that any such statement would be "inaccurate." GM has also flatly denied the Romney campaign's claims in a new radio ad airing in Ohio that suggested the company is shipping jobs to China.

Romney campaign officials stand behind the ad, which they say is accurate and only suggests that if jobs are being created in China, they are not being created in the United States.

What the ad claims and what it implies might be two separate issues, but Romney's aides initially claimed that the GOP challenger's Oct. 25 comments about Jeep in Defiance, Iowa were based on an early version of a Bloomberg News article that first reported on Chrysler's plans for production in China.

The article, written by a Michigan-based industry reporter Oct. 22, said the company would be "adding Jeep production sites," not shifting them to China. Chrysler itself called the piece "clear and accurate."

And a representative for Bloomberg told ABC News that the article was updated on the same day it was published with background information, days before Romney's Jeep claims made an appearance on the trail.

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Anatomy of Romney's Disputed Auto Ad