Secretary Pritzker today concluded a three-day trip to India, where she was honored to join the U.S. delegation traveling with President Obama. During the trip, she announced the expansion of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue to a Strategic and Commercial Dialogue (S&CD), reflecting the two countries’ commitment to strengthening commercial and economic ties. Secretary Pritzker will chair the new commercial components of the Dialogue.

 The elevated S&CD establishes a framework that will strengthen the U.S.-India relationship and create new avenues of cooperation between our governments, our businesses and our peoples. The new commercial element of our most important bilateral dialogue will focus on our shared priorities of growing our economies, creating good jobs, and strengthening our middle class. 

While the S&CD will be used to produce concrete results, the dialogue will also ensure that American and Indian businesses – small, medium and large – are in a position to capitalize on abundant opportunities that exist in both countries. In addition, the United States and India will use the dialogue to promote more trade and investment between both nations and to identify new opportunities for economic and commercial cooperation that will improve the lives of American and Indian citizens. 

To build upon this announcement, Secretary Pritzker led a SelectUSA discussion with Indian CEOs interested in increasing their investments in the United States. The event was hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), India’s largest and oldest business organization, which was established in 1927. FICCI draws its membership from the public and private sectors, as well as various regional chambers of commerce. During the discussion, Secretary Pritzker emphasized that there is no better time to invest in the United States. She also highlighted the role that organizations such as FICCI and its member companies play in supporting SelectUSA’s efforts to promote more foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States. SelectUSA is a government-wide program, housed within the Department of Commerce, and will be hosting the SelectUSA Investment Summit on March 23-24, 2015. 

Caroline Atkinson, Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, Arun Kumar, Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, and Vinai Thummalapally, Executive Director of SelectUSA also joined Secretary Pritzker at the SelectUSA event.