US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said, “More broadly, I hope to use this trip to deepen what is already a significant relationship with respect of friend-shoring that India and the US have. Our ties continue to deepen.”
The US is India’s largest export market. Our bilateral trade reached an all-time high and we are looking for it to even grow it more,” she told reporters.
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US, American businesses announced a number of new investments, including those by chipmaker Micron and Amazon. GE also decided to exchange technology as part of a contract with government-run corporation Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
Following the Covid-19 outbreak, which significantly disrupted the global supply chain, the US, India, Australia, and Japan (the “Quad”) came together. They are now cooperating through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with a number of other nations. The goal of these negotiations has been to lessen reliance on China, a country with whom the US has seen escalating conflict.
“I aim to strengthen our bilateral economic ties and behaviour by the private sector is an important part of friend-shoring and we are seeing continuing announcements of investments in India as an excellent place to be producing and exporting to the US,” Yellen said.
“Last week’s visit served as a step forward in putting our relationship on surer footing and establishing a resilient and productive channel of communication. There is much more work to do. But I believe this trip was an important start. I am eager to build on the groundwork that we laid in Beijing to mobilise further action,” she said ahead of the meeting of G20.
