The US Senate has confirmed Kenneth Juster as the next US Ambassador to India. The confirmation came through a voice vote on Thursday.
The 62-year-old Juster, an old India hand who played a key role in events leading to the landmark India-US civil nuclear deal, will be succeeding Richard Verma, who left in January at the end of the Obama administration.
Juster’s confirmation has come just in time for him to be in India for the Global Entrepreneurship that is being co-hosted by India and the United States in Hyderabad towards the end of this month.
A high-powered US delegation, led by Trump’s daughter and senior advisor Ivanka, will participate in the summit that is to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Welcoming Juster’s confirmation, senior Democratic Senator Mark Warner said in a statement: “I was proud to support Ken’s nomination to be our country’s representative in India, one of our most important defence partners in the region.”
“I have known Ken since we were in law school in the 1970s. As Ambassador, I trust his decades of work on critical issues like trade, cybersecurity and defence will help advance the US-India relationship in a positive direction,” said Warner, who also co-chairs the Senate India Caucus.
A Harvard alumnus, Juster co-chaired the US-India High Technology Cooperation Group under the George W. Bush administration and was one of the key architects of the “Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” – an initiative that prepared the ground for the civil nuclear deal.
When Trump announced his intent in September to nominate him as the next Ambassador to India, Juster was serving as Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs and Deputy Director of his National Economic Council.
Days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington in June, The Washington Post reported that Juster would be named the US Ambassador to India and the White House confirmed the choice, but no formal announcement was made till early September.
It was as Under Secretary of Commerce in the Bush administration from 2001-2005 that Juster came to be closely involved in dealing with India. He was named co-chair of the US-India High Technology Cooperation Group that facilitated trade in sensitive dual-use technology items and eventually set the stage for launching the bilateral strategic partnership.
Juster, who holds a law degree from the Harvard law School and a master’s degree in public policy from the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has also served in the private sector as a partner at the investment firm Warburg Pincus llC, executive vice president at Salesforce.com, and senior partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter.
He has also served as Chairman of Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and as vice chairman of The Asia Foundation.