All major US Fortune 500 companies are among the 2,000 American companies that have invested in India, says Ambassador Sandhu
WASHINGTON DC: Indian Ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu reiterated that the deepening India-US partnership would shape the new century.
Speaking at a webinar on the topic of the India-US partnership at the Hudson Institute here, Ambassador Sandhu said India shared many values with the US which was celebrating its 244th independence day on July 4.
“It is these shared values, democracy, liberty, and equality of opportunity, all under rule of law, which are the foundation of India-US relationship.”
He said the US and India, the world’s oldest and largest democracies, shared a robust relationship, with their bilateral trade standing at $142 billion.
As a major defense partner of the US, India was at the core of the US Indo-Pacific strategy, the Indian ambassador added.
Sandhu pointed out that since 2000, every US president has visited India and every Indian Prime Minister has also visited the US.
The visits of President Donald Trump to India in February and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US in Sep 2019 brought the two countries even closer, he added, referring to what President Barack Obama described as “a defining partnership of the 21st century.”
The India-US strategic partnership is yet to reach its full potential, he said. “There is much that the India-US partnership has achieved, and there is much more that remains to be done in the days ahead.”
Ambassador Sandhu added, “As the world’s largest and oldest democracies, we are natural allies. Our partnership with the US is critical in translating India’s bold vision for development into a reality.”
Sandhu said all major US Fortune 500 companies were among the 2,000 American companies that have invested in India. Similarly, over 200 Indian companies have invested more than $22 billion in the US economy, creating more than 1,25,000 jobs in America, he added.
As major defense partners with $21 billion in defense trade, the two nations support a free and open Indo-Pacific region, based on a rules-based order, based on ASEAN centrality, Ambassador Sandhu said.
With a strong bilateral trade in goods and services standing at $142 billion, he said, the US-India relationship is robust.
Aparna Pande, the think tank’s director of India Initiative, thanked the Indian ambassador for addressing the three broad pegs to the India-US relationship: strategic, economic and people-to-people.
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