RALEIGH, N.C. — It was President Obama’s first policy-related trip of 2014, but he used it to take care of some unfinished business from 2013.

With less than two weeks till his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, Mr. Obama hastened to make good on a pledge from last year’s speech, announcing the creation of a high-tech manufacturing institute aimed at creating well-paying jobs.

Speaking to 2,000 students at North Carolina State University, which is leading a group of universities and companies that established the institute, Mr. Obama said it was the kind of innovation that would reinvigorate the nation’s manufacturing economy.

“We’re not going to turn things around overnight,” Mr. Obama declared, referring to a decade of lost jobs in homegrown North Carolina industries like textiles and furniture making. But, he said, “we are going to start bringing those jobs back to America.”