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UNGA79: Foreign Policy Update on U.S. Economic Priorities [1]

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Date: 2024-09

NEW YORK FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, 799 UNITED NATIONS PLAZA, 10TH FLOOR

MODERATOR: So hi, everyone. Thank you for being here today. For those in the room who trekked through security and those on Zoom who avoided security, welcome as well. I am really honored to have this distinguished panel. Let me introduce them.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Melissa Waheibi. I’m the acting director of the New York Foreign Press Center. Our purpose today is to discuss foreign policy on U.S. economic priorities. As a reminder, this briefing is on the record. The transcript will be available on our website at fpc.state.gov.

So I’m honored to introduce first Jose Fernandez, Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment; Amy Holman, Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs; Sarah Morgenthau, Special Representative, Office of Commercial and Business Affairs; and Dorothy McAuliffe, Special Representative, Office of Global Partnerships.

So we’ll start with opening remarks from our briefers, have a time of Q&A which I will moderate both here in the room and on Zoom. Sir, we’ll begin with you.

QUESTION: Before we do that, can you just – can they just identify themselves?

MODERATOR: Certainly. Let’s start around the room and we’ll give introductions. Go ahead, Katie.

QUESTION: Hi, I’m Katie Pfleghar. I’m from Germany from Bild.

QUESTION: Julian Pecquet. I’m with The Africa Report/Jeune Afrique, based in D.C. And we’ve met before.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Yeah, we’ve met before. Actually a number of you, including –

MODERATOR: Really?

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Yeah.

QUESTION: We met at Asia Society.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Well, my name is Manik Mehta. I’m a syndicated journalist.

QUESTION: I’m Dmytro Anopchenko. I’m correspondent of the Ukrainian Television, D.C. correspondent.

QUESTION: Dimitri Soultogiannis, U.S. correspondent for Star channel in Greece.

QUESTION: Eva Schweitzer. I work for Kleine Zeitung, an Austrian newspaper. Actually, I have a (inaudible.)

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Okay. All right.

QUESTION: It’s not that – yeah, (inaudible) if I had a high circulation.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: (Off-mike.)

QUESTION: Hi there. I’m Asif and I’m with ARY News.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Okay, thank you. Well, so let me start and welcome —

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Oh, well, no, we’ve got too many, I think, right? I mean, I see their names too.

MODERATOR: Yeah, that’s right.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Okay, so let’s get started, and thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for the introduction. And I think a number of you were here last year when we did this as well.

I look forward to taking your questions, but first what I’d like to do is just give you a couple of points to highlight – that I’d like to highlight on how the State Department, the U.S. State Department, is, I think, successfully and tangibly promoting economic prosperity.

I think also as we gather here this week it’s important for all of us to take stock of how important it is to continue promoting economic prosperity if we are going to overcome some of the greatest challenges of our time, and also advance progress towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which we are reminded of every day but when we come to New York they become even more tangible.

We are working across the government together with our partners and allies – and you’ll hear a lot about our partnerships and alliances around the world – to promote economic security. We are promoting economic opportunity for companies overseas; creating jobs here at home, also abroad; working to fight poverty, malnutrition; and also spur innovation; and something again that you will hear over and over and again, leveling the playing field for our companies and our workers. And so I’d like to highlight a couple of the ways that I think we’ve delivered on this mission in the last couple of years with positive impacts that I think will continue.

Through the Economic and Business Affairs Team that you have Sarah here to my left, we have worked to attract more investment in emerging markets. In coordination with the Department of Commerce we have supported over $160 billion worth of new deals for U.S. companies that are investing in countries around the globe. We have strengthened supply chains, which has been a major, major priority of ours, to withstand future shocks like the COVID pandemic. And also we’ve deepened economic relationships with partners by delivering on the President’s trade agenda.

The Energy Resources team that’s led by my colleague Geoff Pyatt, who unfortunately is not here today, we are expanding global access to clean, affordable, and reliable energy. Earlier this week I met with partners in government and the private sector, and we have created the Mineral Security Partnership Finance Network. That’s a – we had over 30 finance institutions from the Mineral Security Partnership to tackle what is one of the major obstacles, major constraints, to strengthening our critical mineral supply chains, and that is finance, especially given the oversupply, the overproduction that you’re seeing from the PRC.

What we are trying to do with – through the Mineral Security Partnership Finance Network is to help diversify and expand global supply chains for the critical minerals that we need for the energy transition, critical minerals that we need for batteries and other clean energy technologies.

And you’ll hear this over and over again from us at the State Department: We are looking to create diverse and sustainable supply chains. We’ve learned our lesson during COVID, and we learned that we must – we must – diversify our supply chains and make them more resilient.

Through our colleagues at the Office of Global Food security we’re also addressing the relationship between global climate change and the global food crisis by building coalitions and partnerships that are implementing one of my favorite programs that we’ve – that we have set up in the last couple of years, the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils – the acronym is VACS, V-A-C-S. It takes the long view of food security, and this week we were fortunate to announce a $5 million contribution to help Guatemalan communities address challenges from climate change and food insecurity. This is initial funding under our – there is more coming and, in fact, has come but we – I announced a $5 million in assistance, the most recent one. This initial funding will support improvements in soil health practices and also invest in the climate-resilient crop varieties.

We have – this is just one little piece of VACS. We are having – we’re doing a lot of work in Africa. We are also – have a newly established food security initiative in the Pacific Islands. And this is a partnership that will continue between the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization – FAO – CIMMYT, and a number of others. It’s showing tremendous progress. And to go back on Guatemala, the need is urgent. Forty-seven percent of children under five in Guatemala, indigenous children, are – suffer from stunted growth. That is not a typo. That is not malnutrition; that is worse. That is stunted growth. And the one way that we’re aiming to help address that and help the Arevalo government’s efforts in agriculture is to help on soils and help on seeds. And that’s what we intend to do moving forward.

Thanks for the effort of our – efforts of our Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. We’ve also announced a plan to provide $10 million to apply new technologies, training, forecasting, and other effective approaches to chronic problems facing countries in the Atlantic partnership. This includes, again, food security, the threat to marine ecosystems, and extreme weather events. At a high-level event this morning, Secretary Blinken announced new initiatives to share scientific data on sea level rise and its effects and funding to protect communities from the – climate impacts of sea level rise.

This also marks the one-year anniversary of the signature of the High Seas Treaty, BBNJ, which we signed last year across the street. I signed it. So far, we’ve gotten 91 countries to join, to also sign the treaty, and 8 countries have ratified it. This is a landmark agreement, an agreement that took decades to complete, and we’re very proud of it. And it will help ensure that the ocean and its living resources are protected going forward.

Our Science and Technology Adviser’s office is driving our efforts in science, technology, and innovation. A major aspect of that is our work on the artificial intelligence. We believe that this is the wave of the future and that it’s important to embrace it but also be mindful of the guardrails that we need to create in order to protect our people. And we have launched a new public-private partnership with several U.S.-based AI companies that will increase access, inclusion, and will also build capacity for artificial intelligence in low- and middle-income countries.

Our newest addition to the subnational diplomacy team led by Ambassador Nina Hachigian, who’s not here, has also engaged many U.S. governors and other elected officials on climate democracy, fentanyl, and more.

I should have mentioned at the beginning that the work that we did on the Mineral Security Partnership finance network was really – it is attributable to the good work of my colleague Dorothy McAuliffe, and I should have given you credit for that. So my apologies.

So what else do we have here that I can brag about? We’ve got a number of leaders from the department’s economic team. Geoff Pyatt, as I mentioned, is not here, but I will now turn it now to Acting Assistant Secretary Amy Holman to my right on the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. This is the bureau that when we hear – when we talk about the work that we are doing on CHIPS, the work that we are doing on many aspects of trade – is led by Amy, and this work that we – when we talk about jobs created, a lot of that goes to the – is to the credit of the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. And I will now turn it over to Amy to just give a couple of minutes on the latest, on the summary of the last year or so. Go ahead.

MS HOLMAN: Okay, great. Thank you very much, Under Secretary Fernandez. Thank you all for coming today and showing interest in our work, and thanks to Melissa and Daphne for bringing us all together today. It’s a real pleasure to be here with you. I’d like to spend a couple of minutes talking about the work that my group of about 180 does, plus we have a whole bunch of contractors that do our sanctions targeting. And then I’d like to talk a little bit about some of the work that I’ve done up here already this week at UNGA High-Level Week.

So what do we do at the Bureau of Economic Affairs? Well, our job is to ensure economic prosperity, first and foremost for the American people but also for the rest of the world, because we’re all in this together. Climate change, all the technological changes that we’ve seen, all the supply shocks that we’ve seen really shows that we’re in this together. So it’s important to design programs and policies that bring economic prosperity both to us here at home and further to economies across the globe.

And this can be transformational for everybody. And the work that we’re doing, as Jose mentioned on supply chains – and I’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute – has been really important, and I think shows the strength of our partnerships that we’ve been working on very, very hard with all of your countries and beyond during the Biden-Harris administration are really bearing fruit.

So we look at policies and programs that design a level playing field for trade and investment and competition policy. We build a resilient and diversified supply chains that prevent disruptions that affect us all adversely, like Jose was saying – we saw what happened during COVID – are helping to drive innovation and investment (inaudible) realizing the technology of the future. And so these are the kinds of conversations I’m having outside of the two major events that I’ve been participating in this week with the private sector, civil society, and countries. We want everybody to leave with the impression that we a key partner driving these policies forward for increased prosperity in the 21st century.

So first of all, I’d like to talk a little bit about the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting headed by Brazil, who is the G20 chair until November. They have decided to do a second foreign ministers meeting – first time ever here at the United Nations High-Level Week – that has a Call to Action Global Governance Reform document that was released after being approved this morning by the group. And they’ve also done the innovative step of inviting not just G20 members and observers and invited countries, but the whole rest of the world so everybody is over there talking about – mostly the themes have been global reform, whether it’s the UN Security Council, whether it’s the multilateral development institutions and making the – a lot – we heard a lot about making the costs of borrowing cheaper for the developing world and the need for reform as we’re confronting the effects of climate change and also a real technological revolution through artificial intelligence.

Which leads me to the second big event – Secretary Blinken and our S/TECH Office organized a side event on Advancing Sustainable Development through Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI. What does that mean? It means we want everybody to have access to AI models and tools. We want to do capacity work. And we want nuanced databases and inclusion – and that means localization, development in local languages. Indonesia pointed out, for example, that they have 1,200 languages and they want AI accessible to everyone.

So Jose mentioned a little bit about the partnership that we rolled out with nine companies – all the big players, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. We put in about $33 million and that’s leveraging about $100 million. Importantly that you guys should all take a look at it is our playbook on AI that gives ways that countries can use AI responsibly, ways to overcome the binding constraints, and examples of the kind of public-private partnerships. This is the result of a year – almost a year-long effort of consultations with countries, civil society, and other stakeholders in this effort including the private sector.

We also look at how we manage the risks of AI, and we’ve all seen what those are in terms of misinformation. And the country – the companies were willing to show how they see AI going forward and how they see making AI inclusive. And so I’ll leave it there and turn it back over to you.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: All right. Thank you. Let me now turn it over to my colleague, Sarah Morgenthau.

MS MORGENTHAU: Thank you, Jose. And can you guys hear me? Good afternoon, everybody. I think one thing – before I start – that the message is clear is that the United States is showing up. The economic coordination across the federal government and at the State Department around the world is strong, and I have seen that as have my colleagues. Everywhere we go around the world, the United States is remaining very competitive.

As special representative for commercial and business affairs at the Department of State, my job is to be a voice for the U.S. business community and promote U.S. business interests around the world. U.S. companies build on-the-ground workforce capacity in our partner countries that results in workers developing transferable skills and expertise, which in turn fosters global innovation and growth. We truly see this as a two-way street: everybody benefits.

At the UN General Assembly and everywhere I go, I champion the positive impact American companies are making around the globe. Just to give you a little flavor of some of the meetings that I’ve had, yesterday, I met with President Duda of Poland at a lunch hosted by the Business Council for International Understanding. The United States and Poland – the relationship could not be at a higher level. We are grateful to them for their assistance in Russia’s invasion on Ukraine and really see them as a partner in combatting climate change globally and bolstering our civil nuclear cooperation. President Duda was very gracious with his comments and encouragement of having more U.S. investment come to Poland, and we welcome that.

My understanding is that there is over 1,500 companies working there already, but really are looking forward to more of that. And another demonstration of sort of the unintended consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is really the look to the United States at – for that – growing that bilateral relationship, which could not be more important.

We have something every year called the Award for Corporate Excellence, which is an awards ceremony that Secretary Blinken does – Jose is involved with that as well – where we give companies that are doing good around the world an award. It is a high-level event, and maybe some of you have attended. And Google Polska was one of the winners in the women’s economic security bucket, and so we are grateful to them for that.

I also met with Peru’s director general for multilateral affairs. We talked about U.S. companies’ readiness to support Peru’s development projects. Really spoke about strengthening trade and our trade ties and bringing more U.S. companies to Peru. Once again, I think the United States is showing up and everybody wants even more.

Last night, I delivered a few remarks at a U.S. Asia-Pacific economic partnership – this was also convened by the Business Council for International Understanding – talking about how we’re delivering on our commitment to our partners across the region and its economic prosperity. We spoke about my upcoming trip to Papua New Guinea in November, which we will be doing with a number of U.S. businesses.

This morning, I joined the U.S. Nigeria Council’s breakfast. We talked about our partnership in the creative industries and the importance of ensuring that we have strong intellectual property protections to enable the growth in this thriving creative sector.

Tomorrow, I’ll be joining Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma for a bilateral conversation with the prime minister of Bhutan. The hope for this discussion also is to increase trade around – particularly around clean energy.

The Biden-Harris administration has made a historic commitment to commercial diplomacy, delivering wins for U.S. companies and for our partners abroad. So I feel proud to be involved in this during this historic time.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Thank you. And we wouldn’t be able to do a lot of this work without global partnerships, and that is the office that is led by my colleague Dorothy McAuliffe. Let me turn it over to you.

MS MCAULIFFE: Thank you, Secretary. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. So my office is the Office of Global Partnerships, and we are the office for leveraging the private sector, working together with the private sector to help us deliver on our foreign policy and national policy goals – national security goals, and to help us implement on the shared values we have with partners and allies around the world.

The Biden administration, first off, made a big commitment to public-private partnerships and leveraging the private sector, because we know that no government alone can solve the rapid – the intense and rapidly changing complex challenges that we all face together, and to advance on the SDGs and all the work that’s the focus of this week. So we know that economic opportunity and prosperity and national security abroad means economic opportunity and prosperity at home.

And so my office if the coordinating office with the private sector, with the Economic Bureau, but also across the State Department as a whole. We work with posts and missions abroad to help advance the public-private partnerships to help us meet those commitments.

So just this morning we launched a very exciting initiative, the Private Sector Humanitarian Alliance. This was an initiative that was raised by the foreign minister of Albania in the Security Council last year, and so the launch today was very poignant and exciting. And that is a galvanizing – an opportunity to build a platform with our international organization partners – the UN as well as USAID and the State Department and the private sector – to help galvanize private sector resources.

And this is not just dollars we’re talking about. The work in my office is very much about capturing the innovation and the creativity and the pace at which the private sector can solve and deliver on challenges and the humanitarian crises that happen either as a result of natural disaster or as a result of human conflict.

And so this was a very exciting initiative that was launched today, and as has been said, we also – one of the big things we did this week and we’re very happy to all – this is the 11th year that we’ve announced the P3 – public-private partnership – Impact Awards with Concordia and the Darden School at the University of Virginia, where we highlight public-private partnerships around the world, not necessarily created by us, but elevating the work of other public-private partnerships around the world and the great work that’s being done, the local work that’s being done on the ground every day, and how can we elevate, shine the light, and make sure we’re advancing and putting that work forward, as well as the work that we are doing on implementing in our own policy priorities.

And so we are all about using the private sector, working with the private sector, collaborating with the private sector to strengthen our multilateral relationships, as well as advancing on the critical issues we’re all facing together as a world. So thank you.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Thank you.

MODERATOR: Great. Thank you for those remarks. We’ll open it up to the room. If you have a question on Zoom, please indicate that in the chat or the raised hand feature. I will call on you, but we’ll start with Dmytro. Please state your name and organization again for the transcript. Thank you.

QUESTION: Yeah, thank you very much. Dmytro Anopchenko for Ukrainian television, D.C. correspondent. Thank you very much for this discussion. And I got a specific question about Ukraine. President Zelenskyy is in the United States right now, and he’s intended to present his victory plan to President Biden tomorrow. It’s up to him to speak about the military part of the plan, but what I know that economical – economic support from the partners and from America is the part of this plan and is – the feeling is that a Ukrainian victory is impossible without the economical support. So could you share your vision of the financial support to Ukraine – continues financial support to Ukraine may be provided?

And secondly, if I may, we don’t have Geoff Pyatt here, but Under Secretary Fernandez, can you tell about support to Ukraine in restoring the energy grid? Because for right now it’s the – issue number one for all Ukrainians.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Thank you. Thank you for the question. And we spend a lot of time on Ukraine. I personally have been to Kyiv. I have witnessed both the destruction caused by Russians attacks as well as the resilience and the courage of the Ukrainian people. I always say that Ukrainians don’t have a plan B. They – their – they have a plan A, and that is to win and to regain their territory. So I’m – you’re talking to someone who spends lots of his time, goes to sleep thinking about Ukraine, sometimes wakes up thinking about Ukraine, and in the meantime we try and do all we can.

And you’re right that the energy situation is a serious concern. And since the beginning of Russia’s invasion, we’ve allocated over a billion and a half dollars in order to address Ukraine’s energy sector needs. That includes sending equipment to Ukraine to repair damage to the electricity grid, provide backup power generation, install warming centers, and restore district heating systems. Geoff Pyatt and the ENR office, bureau have led the international community’s efforts to support the recovery and security of Ukraine’s energy system. He chairs the G7+ ministerial group that was launched by Secretary Blinken in November of 2022. I was – I have been in the G7+ partners meeting in June of this year that announced an additional billion dollars at the Berlin Ukraine Recovery Conference. And we’re now working on securing additional energy generation for Ukraine.

It is important that Ukraine is able to thrive this winter. We are also – we are also engaging companies to talk about – to talk about investments in Ukraine once – and that – then some of that can go on right now. And you’d be – that we’re seeing lots of interest in the part of U.S. and other companies in exploring opportunities today in Ukraine – for example, interested in the Ukraine – Ukraine’s – before the war, its IT sector was a very strong sector. There are companies that are interested in exploring opportunities in mining.

Obviously, the war will impinge upon some of those plans, but we are not waiting for Ukraine to prevail in this war before starting to think about investment that could help to rebuild the country from Russia’s unjustified and brutal attacks.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Go ahead. Name and or.

QUESTION: Hey, I’m Dimitri Soultogiannis with Star channel, Greece. This week, Greece and Cyprus are holding talks which are seen as a last shot to sort out the issues surrounding an interconnection project that will lead the Cypriot, Greek electricity grids, really allowing the multi-billion Euro subsea – to connect Europe, the Middle East, and Asia by linking the electricity transmission. That’s for the Cypress, Greece, and Israel triangle. And my question is: Any U.S. involvement in the project that you know of so far?

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: I – that will be a question that I will pass on to my colleague, Geoff Pyatt. He would be involved in that. I know he has been – and for several couple of years now, we have been looking at that project. But I don’t want to give you details that are going to be incorrect.

MS MCAULIFFE: I would just add, Jose, if I can, that this is one of the things that you’re really seeing in the Biden-Harris administration with the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the bipartisan infrastructure – is really this focus on how we can build our alliances, strengthen our alliances around shared values, shared global challenges – clean energy being one of them. And so I think that this is a priority for us as well as the regional connectivity piece, which is – which is enormously important. and as we have seen – Jose mentioned – as we came out of the pandemic and we saw overreliance on one country and really the need for supply chain diversification, the need to really move goods and services through and having that regional connectivity. Thank you.

MS MORGENTHAU: I’d like to add as well that in early December we are working with our consulate in Thessaloniki and we are taking a partnership opportunity delegation on whole transformation away from coal and how – what are the parallels between U.S. (inaudible), are challenges with moving in terms of job opportunity, job creation, switch – moving from full jobs to clean-energy jobs and what those challenges are as we think about real people facing these challenges. And so not directly an answer to your question, but just to show that the work that we are doing together with Greece around the many strides they have made on the energy transformation and electricity particularly. So just wanted to share that, and if you wanted more details we can provide those to you.

MODERATOR: One second. Mr. Fernandez, you might need to be pulled for an outside meeting. So we can – if the remaining of you want to stay and answer questions, that’d be really helpful.

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Is there an easy question I can leave with? (Laughter.)

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Why don’t you go ahead, the both of you go ahead and – go ahead. Yeah.

QUESTION: I as well?

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: Yeah, yeah.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

QUESTION: Well, I wanted to ask you about the —

MODERATOR: Could you please state your name and organization again? Yeah, thanks.

QUESTION: Yeah, Julian with The Africa Report (inaudible). I wanted to ask you about the new Minerals Security Partnership Finance Network, how it would work in particular vis-à-vis the Lobito Corridor. The President’s going there, as you know, next month to Angola. So have we started having those discussions with some of these finance partners on how they could contribute to that effort? And also, any interest in bringing in more African development banks? I see that Africa – the AFC is part of this, but you know (inaudible) the African development banks —

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: We are – we’re just getting started. Something that we – the Mineral Security Partnership has been more successful than we could have imagined, to be frank. In the last two years, really the year and a half of operations, we’ve brought forward 13 projects that we can – and those are public – that we cited. We’ve got about 32 at last count projects that are in the pipeline. And as you know, in the mining world, when projects take 10 to 20 years to come downstream, that’s a – that’s lightning speed.

So what we wanted to do with the mineral finance networks is, especially at a time that because of overcapacity in – and overproduction, mostly on the part of the PRC in cobalt, in lithium, and the like that has brought prices down, the number of projects have had difficulty finding financing. And so we decided that we needed to really find a way to galvanize and promote coordination and cooperation between export finance – export credit agencies and development finance corporations – DFC, in our case – and then USTDA and Ex-Im Bank. And that’s what we are doing.

We need more coordination; we need to be able to share projects. There may be a project that, because of the risk profile, that one of the banks is already overextended in that risk profile – other banks can do it. And so we are going to – we are going to really increase the cooperation, and there’s great interest, including from the African Finance Corporation, to help on this score and to – and there are many projects in Africa that we believe could be helped by this kind of investment.

And I met with a number of African leaders in the last couple of days, and they all have projects. This is an opportunity for countries to benefit from the – from the world’s need for critical minerals, and it’s incumbent on us to do all that we can to make sure that these investments follow high-ESG principles, because countries – producing countries – do not want to have to choose between environmental degradation and economic growth. We will have – tomorrow we will have a meeting of the MSP Forum partners, which is 15 – which is the 15 countries that have agreed to join the forum. And again, what we’re aiming to do is to accelerate these projects and do all that we can to make sure that these are minerals that are available for the clean energy revolution.

Go ahead. Shoot.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) Pakistan? I’m Asif from ARY News, Pakistan. Is Pakistan part of a global partnership in this program? And if —

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: It – we have not received – we have looked at projects in Pakistan, but this is – we’re not limited to countries that are either part of the MSP Forum or the MSP itself. We are – we are looking at projects in all continents, in many, many countries. And so if there are projects in Pakistan, I think – I think we will be delighted to take a look.

Go ahead.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) economic question. I assume you have all followed the news, the war in Lebanon. We – the war Israel (inaudible) in Lebanon. Yeah, are you following the news?

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: How could I not? Yes.

QUESTION: So this whole pager incident, has that led the United States to put in some extra security in case, like, (inaudible) —

UNDER SECRETARY FERNANDEZ: I don’t do security (inaudible). (Laughter.) I don’t do security, but I appreciate your question.

Thank you, everybody.

MODERATOR: Thank you.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MODERATOR: So we’ll close this up. Is there any final questions for our other panelists? We know the under secretary has to leave, but they might have an opportunity to answer. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Well, at yesterday’s —

MODERATOR: If you could state your name and org – sorry – for the transcript. Thank you.

QUESTION: Sorry. Manik Mehta, syndicated journalist. There was a meeting yesterday between Daniel Russel, who was formerly from the State Department, and the visiting Indian foreign minister, Dr. Subramanyam. And Mr. Russell dropped hints about a FTA with India. How realistic is that?

MS HOLMAN: I’ll follow-up on —

MS MORGENTHAU: Okay. Sure.

MS HOLMAN: Right now, the – we’re – we don’t have the legislation in place to do free trade agreements. We haven’t had it in place for many, many years now because we need some sort of fast-track authority that we are not looking at doing free trade agreements currently.

QUESTION: So that’s off the table, right, for the time being?

MS HOLMAN: Well, he’s speaking on his own prerogative, right? He’s not U.S. Government official. I don’t know. I wasn’t in the meeting. I don’t – haven’t read anything about the meeting. But I would see it highly unlikely that we would be proposing any free trade agreement with India at the current time, because we’re negotiating other arrangements with other countries. And we’re very, very interested in deepening and broadening our relationship with India across many, many sectors. But I don’t see what you’re asking. I don’t —

QUESTION: How do you define this special partnership with India?

MS HOLMAN: Well, we’ve increased our relationship in many, many areas. We’ve gotten closer diplomatically. We’ve seen more collaboration in many areas, including in semiconductor resilience areas, with India, among others.

MS MORGENTHAU: I would just add that the bilateral relationship between India and the United States is incredibly strong. We just finished – President Biden just met – had the Quad meeting, which he hosted at his home in Delaware this year and had the prime minister there. And I know that there was robust conversation about the importance of that relationship. Our Deputy Secretary Richard Verma at the Department of State is the former U.S. ambassador to India, and so this has been a big and important focus for us.

QUESTION: Thank you. Katie Pfleghar from Bild, Germany. I have a question about investments in Germany. Over the last years, does – the location got very unattractive. A lot of countries to invest, a lot of companies are leaving Germany because the energy is very expensive, a lot of bureaucracy. Are you still planning – or would you say that Germany is still an attractive place to invest? Because right now, it feels like it’s not. Intel was supposed to come. It’s getting delayed. And a lot of companies leaving Germany right now, which is, for us, the worry.

MS MORGENTHAU: I think the relationship between Germany and the United States is very strong, and trade and investment remains very strong and a focus of ours. I have been in conversations about energy sector and the importance of that. But we – look, every day all of us are working day in and day out, and we’re – and also with the men and women who are at our embassies around the world, really to strengthen our relationships, our economic ties, our trade and investment, to make it a better place to invest.

And part of this, I think I said in the beginning, is the two-way street, which is that we are working with our countries around the world to build the capacity and strengthen in their countries. They benefit; we benefit. When American companies are out there, it’s creating more jobs and opportunities and building and strengthening their economies as well as creating jobs and opportunities for us here. So – we thank you very much.

QUESTION: If I could step back a little bit, you’re all on the front lines of U.S. commercial diplomacy at a time when – I know you can’t get into U.S. electoral politics, obviously. But both candidates are talking about – economic nationalism is very much the order of the day. We’re talking about tariffs in Washington. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you have those conversations with your interlocutors from other countries. How do you boost U.S. exports when some of these countries might be worried that their own exports might be taxed? Like, how are those conversations happening? Are you helping to alleviate some of their concerns? Just love to get your thoughts on how you approach. I’m sure all those questions come up with some of the people you’re talking to, so –

MS HOLMAN: Well, I mean, we have conversations with everybody all the time. There’s a huge amount of give and take with this. I mean, tariffs are not new to commercial policy, and we have reasons for taking the policy decisions that we do. And some of them are decisions that are echoed by our other partners in terms of security considerations around electric vehicles and the like. And we just have frank, honest conversations with our interlocutors. I would leave it there.

MS MORGENTHAU: I will leave you with one top line that I think reflects the enormous investments that we’ve seen in the Biden-Harris administration, is that we just finished our SelectUSA Summit, which was over 5,000 participants, delegations, business delegations, coming from around the world, and was there with Secretary Blinken. And SelectUSA, since its inception, has attracted, I think, over 200 billion in investment in the United States, over 200 million jobs. Over 65 percent of that has been because of investments and during the Biden-Harris administration. So clearly, the United States is open for business, and we are seeing that.

MODERATOR: Great. Well, thank you for coming. The transcript will be available on fpc.state.gov. We look forward to seeing you progressively.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/unga79/foreign-policy-update-on-economic-priorities

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