US, India must set tough goals to achieve 500 billion dollars in bilateral trade: Atul Keshap

“I think it’s vitally important that we show that democracies can deliver; that the United States and India can be a driver of global growth, growth and a model for prosperity and development in the 21st century,” Keshap said.

Keshap, a veteran American diplomat, has served in various capacities during his illustrious career with the US State Department. These included the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. “I feel it’s vitally critically important that we show that open societies powered by free enterprise can be relevant for their people and can help power the world out of this pandemic. I tend to agree entirely with President (Joe) Biden and Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi that the US India Partnership is a force for global good and it’s going to have a huge impact on economic growth on reducing poverty on global security and dealing with all of the challenges of our time,” he said.

“So, upon deeper reflection,” the 50-year-old former diplomat noted, he decided that USIBC is the place where he can put the most effort into helping people of the two countries. US Chamber’s president Suzanne Clark in her speech last week drove home the point that democracies need to be ambitious, and they need to think boldly.

“We need to move forward on the global trade agenda. We need to ensure the prosperity of the future, especially after this pandemic,” he said.

He also referred to the vision of Biden, which he set as the vice president, about potentially having $500 billion in trade in goods and services between the US and India.

“That’s a very ambitious number and I believe in it. It is a great idea to try to have ambitious targets and to be ambitious if we in our democracies are not ambitious, then we are only at a standstill. So, we should always be improving,” he said. When Keshap, first as a US diplomat, started working on India US relationship the bilateral trade was $20 billion, which increased exponentially to $147 billion in 2019.

“So, we’re on the way. That is because of positive, friendly, mutually respectful work between bureaucrats, politicians, technical experts, corporate officials to try to make sure that that number continues to grow,” he said. Total bilateral trade between India and the US stood at $80.5 billion in 2020-21 as against $88.9 billion in 2019-20. India’s exports to the US stood at $51.62 billion in 2020-21 as against $53 billion in 2019-20. India’s imports from the US stood at $28.9 billion in 2020-21 as against $35.9 billion in 2019-20, according to commerce ministry data.