Amtrak Joe is set to announce rail and shipping project with Narendra Modi: Corridor Biden helped ink would include include Saudis and United Arab Emirates

The White House is about to announce a new shipping and rail corridor project it calls “groundbreaking,” with the prospects of bringing more stability to the turbulent Middle East region by more closely linking regional economies.

The project is a new rail transport corridor that would include the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union – although it is not exactly ‘shovel-ready’, with leaders set to announce only a ‘memorandum of understanding’. ‘ am working on it.

National Security Council official John Finer told reporters passing through New Delhi on Friday that this could help lower temperatures due to the “turbulence and insecurity” coming from the Middle East.

“It will be a clear demonstration of a new model that President Biden has pioneered for more transparent and sustainably sustainable development, high-quality, sustainable infrastructure that fills a damaged gap and enables greater prosperity and better connectivity for key regions across the world.” world,” he said. .

Biden is expected to make the announcement on Friday afternoon – at an event that could put him in close association with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who infamously fist bumped Biden during a trip to Saudi Arabia last year.

Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plan to announce the project as part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment. The rail and shipping corridor would allow greater trade between the countries, including energy products. It could also be one of the more ambitious counterparts to China’s own Belt and Road initiative, which aimed to connect more of the world to that country’s economy.

Finer laid out three main reasons for the project in a phone call with reporters. He first said the corridor would increase prosperity between the countries involved by increasing the flow of energy and digital communications. Second, the project would help address the lack of infrastructure needed for growth in lower and middle-income countries. And third, Finer said it could help “turn the temperature down” on the “turbulence and insecurity” coming from the Middle East.

“We see that this has great appeal in the countries involved, and also globally, because it is transparent, because it is a high standard, because it is not coercive,” Finer said.

Finer also laid out Biden’s agenda at the G20. The first part of the summit revolves around the theme ‘One Earth’. The US president plans to use this theme to push for more investments to tackle climate change, such as his own domestic incentives to encourage the use of renewable energy. Biden also wants to emphasize that Russia’s war in Ukraine is hurting many other countries, which have faced higher food and energy costs and higher interest costs on their debt.

The second part of the summit is about ‘One Family’. Biden plans to use this section to discuss his request to Congress for additional funding for the World Bank, which could generate more than $25 billion in new economic development loans.

The White House is more broadly trying to strengthen the G20 as an international forum, while Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have chosen not to attend. Still, China and Russia are represented at the summit and that could make it difficult for the G20 to make a joint statement on the war in Ukraine, Finer said.