Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Barack Obama: "The deficit is still too high"

US President Barack Obama has hailed a deal reached to avert a "fiscal cliff" of huge tax rises and spending cuts.

After the House of Representatives passed the bill by 257 votes to 167, Mr Obama said the measures were "just one step in the broader effort to strengthen the economy".

It raises taxes for the wealthy and delays spending cuts for two months.

There had been intense pressure for the vote to be passed before financial markets reopened on Wednesday.

Financial markets have responded positively to the move.

In Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index opened up 2.1% on Wednesday morning, while South Korea's Kospi added 1.7% and Australia's ASX 200 rose 1.2%.

UK shares jumped 1.5% on opening, German stocks gained by 1.6%, while France's Cac 40 rose 1.4% and Italy's stocks gained 2%.

Economists' warnings

The president's tone after the vote was not conciliatory

In Tuesday night's house vote, 172 Democrats and 85 Republicans voted in favour of the bill.

A majority of Republicans, 151 in total, voted no, along with 16 Democrats.

The bill had been passed in the Senate less than 24 hours earlier by 89 votes to eight after lengthy talks between Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Republicans.

US media reaction Jonathan Weisman in the New York Times says the deal revealed a new breed of Republicans, who seemed "determined to put themselves in a position to be blamed for sending the nation's economy into a potential tailspin under the weight of automatic tax increases and spending cuts". In the Washington Post, Zachary A Goldfarb says the deal averted "a dangerous dose of austerity but still leaves the economy vulnerable to both immediate and more distant threats", warning that it is "too modest", does nothing to address unemployment and "fails to defuse the prospect of a catastrophic national default two months from now". Writing for Forbes magazine, John Zogby says more was at stake in the negotiations than the economy, "namely, the question of whether or not Congress could still be a viable, problem-solving body or whether it was doomed to irrelevance". Both parties had to show they could work together, he says. "And at the last minute, they did just that. And their ultimate reward: they saved their own butts."

Speaking before returning to Hawaii for his interrupted Christmas holiday, Mr Obama said that in signing the law, he was fulfilling a campaign pledge.

"I will sign a law that raises taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans... while preventing a middle-class tax hike," he told a White House press conference.

The US deficit was still too high, he said. While open to compromise on budgetary issues, he would not offer Congress spending cuts in return for lifting the government's borrowing limit, known as the debt ceiling.

"There is a path forward, if we focus not on politics, but on what's right for the country," added Mr Obama.

House Speaker John Boehner, who voted for the measure, said in a statement the focus would now turn to spending.

"The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the 'balanced' approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt."

The "fiscal cliff" measures - cutting spending and increasing taxes dramatically - came into effect automatically at midnight on Monday when George W Bush-era tax cuts expired.

The 1 January deadline triggered tax increases of about $536bn and spending cuts of $109bn from domestic and military programmes.

At the scene In the end, it was settled after a tense meeting of House Republicans in a basement conference room. When a stony-faced Speaker John Boehner left the room an hour later, one Congressman was overheard on the phone - it was "looking like a long night", he said, apologetically. Out of the basement, the smell of pizza wafted through the ornate House corridors. If the fiscal cliff was going to hurt ordinary Americans, the threat of it did no harm to one pizza parlour just a short hop down Pennsylvania Avenue. Before the final vote, dissenters and supporters lined up to make their point. "Common sense has prevailed," one Democrat declared; a prominent Republican said he simply did not believe spending cuts would eventually be delivered. But as the votes rolled in, House members stood on the floor and watched as the scoreboard lit up, and applauded - briefly - when the crucial 217th vote was cast. Q&A: The US fiscal cliff

Economists had warned that if the full effects of the fiscal cliff were allowed to take hold, the resulting reduction in consumer spending could have sparked a new recession.

The compromise deal extends the tax cuts for Americans earning under $400,000 (£246,000) - up from the $250,000 level Democrats had originally sought.

In addition to the income tax rates and spending cuts, the package includes