The U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council is pleased to direct your attention to an op-ed by Danny Sebright published today in The National. In the article, Sebright highlights U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker’s inaugural trade mission the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar next week as an opportunity to showcase U.S.-U.A.E. trade and business relations. For your convenience, the full op-ed can be found below with a link to the original.
US secretary of commerce visit shows business cooperation with UAE
By: Danny Sebright
5 March 2014
The National
The United States secretary of commerce, Penny Pritzker, kicks off her inaugural trip to the Middle East in Abu Dhabi and Dubai on Sunday, clearly indicating that Washington views the commercial ties between the US and the UAE as a cornerstone of the bilateral relationship.
In fact, this will be the first trade mission visit to the region by a sitting US secretary of commerce in fifteen years, pointing to enormous and untapped opportunities for US businesses.
With a US$26.9 billion trade volume and a promising economic outlook for enhanced trade relations, it is easy to see why last year the UAE was America’s largest export destination in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region for the fifth year in a row.
For its part, the UAE — only an eight hour flight from 60 per cent of the world’s established and emerging markets — boasts world-class and multi-modal infrastructure built to support the rapid rise of global travellers and executives connecting through the Emirates to key economic nerve centres in Mena and around the globe. American industry is playing a vital role in supporting this development by lending ingenuity and innovative training to Emirati business leaders as the UAE secures its position as a player on the world stage.
Key sectors fuelling the global economy stand ready for US-UAE commercial partnership and joint innovation, including: infrastructure development and green build, energy development — including renewable, nuclear, oil and gas — aerospace defence and security, transportation and logistics, civil and commercial aviation, media and tourism, health care and medicine, and education.
The global development of these sectors has been intrinsically linked to US-UAE commercial growth credited in part to ambitious economic development plans set forth by the UAE leadership — notably UAE Vision 2021, Abu Dhabi Vision 2030, and Dubai Vision 2020 — and a US commerce department-led push toward enhancing president Barack Obama’s national export initiative with Ms Pritzker’s agenda.
Implementation of these diversification strategies over the next few decades and an immediate increase in foreign direct investment are already under way in both countries. In fact, delivery schedules in the UAE have gone into overdrive thanks to a successful campaign by Dubai to host the World Expo 2020.
According to Reem Ibrahim al-Hashimy, Minister of State and the managing director of Dubai’s successful bid campaign, World Expo 2020 will create approximately 250,000 local jobs and the need for billions of dollars of infrastructure projects in the UAE. Each of these jobs created is slated to sustain an additional 50 jobs and boost federal efforts to double global tourism numbers from the current figure of 10 million per year to 20 million by 2020.
Further, the UAE’s leadership has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to airport- and infrastructure-related expansion projects across the country, including the development of a federal multi-modal rail system set to ultimately link to neighbouring GCC countries, boosting production from an active and increasingly diverse energy grid, and funding nationwide road, clean water, and other critical infrastructure initiatives to drive economic growth and well-being.
In planning these projects, the UAE’s leadership has offered American industry a seat at the head table with other key commercial partners, including the European Union, India, South Korea and China. Ms Pritzker’s inaugural trade mission to the UAE, then Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is evidence that American private and public sector leaders are taking this invitation seriously.
Danny Sebright is the president of the US-UAE Business Council and head of the Middle East Practice at The Cohen Group
