US ambassador Smith with Hager and Rowhani at the ‘Doing Business in the USA Forum’ at the Four Seasons yesterday.


The US – Qatar bilateral trade now accounts for $7bn, said the US ambassador Dana Shell Smith.
“The US - Qatar relationship is strong on many levels. Our business and cultural relationship is the foundation that underpins so much of what we do,” she said while opening the ‘Doing Business in the USA Forum’ here yesterday.
Hosted at the Four Seasons, the half-day forum was a feature event of the Discover America – USA Week Qatar. Besides the ambassador, special guests included Robert A Hager, chairman, AmCham Qatar, Rodney E Slater, partner, Squire Patton Boggs and the former US Secretary of Transportation, Remy Rowhani, director general, Qatar Chamber and secretary general of ICC; Ryan Elzein, Foreign Service commercial, the US Embassy in Qatar, Zubaid Ahmad, vice chairman and global head (Private Sector) Citi, Susan B Bastress, partner, Squire Patton Boggs, Scott Cooper, partner, Fragomen Worldwide and Bob Hercules, Independent filmmaker and co-owner, Media Process Group.
Ahmad provided a detailed economic overview of the US economy, saying that many sovereign wealth funds and other investors in the Middle East and Asia were looking to the US economy, which he and others at the forum agreed was on the cusp of renewed economic growth and expansion.
When asked specifically about the impact of lower energy prices, he anticipated that investors in the Qatar and the GCC, who traditionally saw international energy assets as competition, may in fact have new opportunities to invest in them.