US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday that her country’s strategy of “friend-shoring” aligns the manufacturing and sourcing of components and raw materials with shared values.
Yellen, who is visiting India for the first time as US Treasury Secretary, said at the Microsoft India Development Center that the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict are reasons to strengthen economic ties between the two countries. “India is one of our trusted trading partners. In a world where supply chain vulnerabilities can impose heavy costs, we believe it’s important to strengthen our trade ties with India and the large number of countries that share our approach to economic relations. This includes both developing and advanced economies,” she said at the event.
The US Treasury Secretary said that their goal is to promote global economic integration while creating greater redundancies in the supply chain to mitigate concentration risks.
She further said that the country also wanted to diversify away from risky countries like Russia that seek to weaponize trade integration to advance their geopolitical aims.
“We call this strategy ‘friendshoring’. Modernizing our trade relationships in this way will pay dividends. Increased trade between our two countries can result in economic benefits for our people.
It will also provide greater reliability and certainty for consumers and businesses on key goods and inputs,” Yellen said.
Recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on trade in the 21st century, which requires trust, transparency, and timeliness, she said that the US will deepen integration to serve all three of these goals.
“We are already seeing new supply chains develop in India,” the US Treasury Secretary said.
To support her upper statement, she further said that there are investments by companies like Apple and Google, which had previously announced their plans to expand phone production in India.
