US and India must cooperate to reduce dependence on China: Eric Garcetti

HYDERABAD: US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti has called for closer ties between India and the United States for mutual benefit in technology, manufacturing, and higher education sectors. He also underscored the need for a collaborative effort between the two countries to fight climate change and enhance people-to-people contacts.

Ambassador Garcetti speaks exclusively to Deccan Chronicle on ways to take the multi-faceted trade and economic engagement between India and the US to the next level.

Excerpts:

Q. India has the world's second largest start-up community after the United States. The economies of both the countries are heavily service-focused. How does the US administration plan to tap these synergies for the benefit of people in both the countries?

Well, you know, as the Ambassador over the last 18 months, I've been blown away by how much the Indian dream mirrors the American dream. The idea that if you study hard, work hard and have a great idea, it doesn't matter where you come from, what religion, what language, what region, how rich your parents are, you can create your dreams.

And we see Indian immigrants doing that in the United States, leading Fortune 500 companies and some of the most valuable companies in the world, like Microsoft and Alphabet and more.

So I want to invest in the next generation of Indian entrepreneurs that don't necessarily have to come to the United States to see those dreams come true, because there's a benefit to both sides of the Indo-Pacific when the next great space company that can do something at one one-hundredth the price of a European or Western company can innovate in space.

We recently had our small business administrator, Isabel Guzman, come here to Hyderabad, and she went to T-Hub, We-Hub, the places I've gone to as well, where you can't but get excited by the entrepreneurs dealing in health tech, space tech, defence tech, digital tech. All of those are looking for solutions. And so we're investing in partnerships between both countries.

For instance, INDUS X (India-United States Defence Acceleration Ecosystem) is an initiative that is looking at startups. And a couple Indian companies just won a US Space Force request for proposals to help them with new technologies in space. It's a great example. We trust India. We trust Indian companies. And so for the most pressing and important challenges, Indian companies are solving that.

Q. Women participation in the Indian start-up ecosystem is still considerably low. Any plans to foster women entrepreneurship in India?

Administrator Guzman talked about building a portal where women-owned businesses, start-ups, will be able to find each other. Maybe there's a textile startup here in India and a clothing company there in the US that will find each other online so that India and US entrepreneurs will change the fashion world together, and so on and so forth.

We've got partnerships around entrepreneurship that we do in biotechnology, cancer research, in space, in defence, soon with women entrepreneurs, and two or three other key areas. So we want to continue investing in those programmes.

Our agencies like USAID, the State Department, our Commerce Department, sometimes don't just give money out. They give skills, experience, networking, access to capital. We, for instance, through our Development Finance Corporation, have given money to expand capital to more Indians who normally wouldn't get approved for a bank loan. And by guaranteeing for banks the ability to go to rural areas, maybe women entrepreneurs, folks from minority communities, they now get a bank loan for their business to take off as well.

Q. India and the United States are considered to be natural allies. There has been great cooperation between the technology companies of the two companies. However, the same kind of cooperation is not to be seen in the manufacturing sector. When the geopolitical interests of India and the US converge under the Quad umbrella, will we get to see more manufacturing companies opting for India under their China-plus One strategy?

You know, the US-India relationship is natural and limitless. And I think when it comes to manufacturing, it's a perfect place for us to continue to grow our friendship and our collaboration. Right now, we have $200 billion of trade between our two countries.

We're India's number one trading partner. But when it comes to technology, our leaders have clearly said the critical technologies that will define our future, we need to collaborate even more closely, as two democracies, to make sure these technologies connect us and protect us, rather than harm us and divide us.

Secondly, we also look at ways that we can manufacture the consumer and critical technologies of the future in an affordable way.

There was an op-ed piece saying that we could, by the end of this decade, double our trade, if the US and India create a preferential technology corridor, where we prioritise Indian manufacturing in places the US will never be able to compete and vice versa. It's a benefit to the United States, because where we have high-end manufacturing, those components might be able to enter into India without the same level of tariff or trade barriers.

India wins because they learn how to manufacture more and more complex things. America wins because we have a fellow democracy that we know, love and respect, helping manufacture the critical goods of the future. And the world wins, because they're not dependent on one country, which too many of us are overly dependent on, that might not reflect our values.

Q. Of late, more countries have turned protectionist. Free trade is seen as a zero-sum game even among close strategic allies. Is there a way to make free trade a win-win proposition between natural allies like India and the US through free movement of labour in both ways to create shared prosperity?

I certainly would hope so. I'm a big fan of immigration in my country. I'm the grandson of immigrants on both sides of my family that fled their countries because of war or economic hardship. I not only found opportunities, but I wouldn't be here today as ambassador if it wasn't a welcoming country. And I think when we have legal immigration, especially in areas that are key to our economic growth, we've seen that with Indian immigrants, with H-1B tech workers.

But when we think about other challenges such as those we faced in healthcare in the past, for instance, we didn't have enough nurses in the United States. So we did that with the Philippines, where great nurses were coming and enhanced the health of our people.

Today, one in four Americans has been treated by an Indian doctor. So maybe in that healthcare space, we can look at other jobs, whether it's mental health and anti-addiction specialists, nurses and medical technicians, and find where the needs are, and can we specify new visa types or larger quotas to be able to bring more Indians. I don't think Americans, if they look at the statistics, would oppose that 1.5 per cent of the American population now is of Indian descent. Six per cent of the taxes are paid by people of Indian descent. So it's been an immensely economically beneficial thing for India, for Indians who immigrate, and for America. And vice versa.

Similarly, we see many Indian Americans, but also non-Indian Americans looking for opportunities to work in India. Now you can come, have a great quality of life, live in a beautiful city like Hyderabad at a fraction of the cost that you might live in a New York or a San Francisco.

Now it's time to prove that here in India, Americans will have a kind of welcome mat laid out for them, as we've done for many decades, and how can we expand that welcome mat even further for Indians.

But we also want to make sure people aren't coming into the United States illegally. We saw an uptick in the number of Indians trying to enter the United States through the southern border in Mexico or the northern border of Canada without visas. One common solution is to make sure that we are able to work together to make sure those people aren't exploited by people offering them dreams and taking their money and landing them in jail or deportation.

Q. India is looking to shift to cleaner fuels, which will immensely contribute in controlling global warming. As the world leader, how could the US help India in protecting the climate, which is a shared heritage of humankind?

This is, for me, the highest priority. It's half the reason I took this job, to be ambassador. I worked as the mayor of the second largest city in America, Los Angeles. But I created a network of American mayors and headed the worldwide network of the top hundred city mayors in the world, looking at solutions to the greatest crisis we face, which is climate change.

I live in New Delhi, where it was a record-breaking hot summer, the hottest temperature ever experienced, some of the worst rain and floods that they've ever experienced. This is going to be the rest of our lives. So we're working in a few areas.

One is financing. Our development finance corporation, which funds climate solutions, India is their number one country in the world, 10 per cent of all the dollars, over $5 billion in everything from electric buses to solar manufacturing and more.

Second, we're looking at expanding a pool together, and we recently, with the Prime Minister's visit last weekend, announced that the US and India together will have a $1 billion fund for climate solutions through the World Bank that will look at financing everything from buildings, transportation, energy, in a green, sustainable way that takes carbon out of the air and helps improve people's lives.

Third is, while we're looking for less carbon, we also have to make people's lives more livable. I think the biggest place we can do this is in efficient cooling. And we had a contest worldwide for the most efficient air conditioning system in the world, where an Indian innovation won.

So now we can use things like the Quad, where the biggest manufacturer of air conditioners is a Japanese company that already manufactures here. Can we bring a Japanese company together with Indian innovation and American financing to ensure that people aren't dying in the heat or that they aren't suffering in the heat? I am really impressed with India's pace of adding renewables, but we also want to help there be options to not expand carbon-based, whether it's coal, oil, gas, those things that will only make things hotter and more polluted here. I think we can do that together by being good partners, not ever preaching and teaching, but listening, learning, and collaborating.

Q. The US is a major hub for foreign education for Indians. However, US colleges are not totally equipped to meet the Indian demand because of the limited number of admissions as well as affordability. As India has allowed foreign direct investment in the institutes of higher education, could US universities set up their India campuses or collaborate with their Indian counterparts to meet the untapped demand for US education in India?

Absolutely. Yes, and it is happening. It's finally, after decades of talk, actually happening. First of all, we're very proud that India is now the number one source of foreign students coming to American universities. It's grown beyond our wildest dreams, and it's twice the next biggest country. We are able to nearly double the number of Indians with existing resources coming to America.

We also want to see more Indians who aren't just the ones that can already afford it because of their family's wealth to come, but work with Indian foundations to ensure that students from poorer backgrounds have opportunities to come to the United States.

But secondly, it's been my dream to bring more Americans to India and also to have more American institutions offering their programmes to Indians. So to give you one example, Arizona State University in collaboration with Amity University will be opening up 20-plus campuses together. In the past, it has been difficult for American universities. But thankfully, India changed some of those laws recently to make it easier. And I think the best way to do that is in partnership.