Washington, Hanoi to fast-track trade negotiations
THE country and the United States have agreed to speed up trade talks, Hanoi said.
Vietnam has the third-biggest trade surplus with the United States, after China and Mexico, and is anxious to address the imbalance to head off President Donald Trump's threatened 46% levy as part of his global tariff blitz.
Vietnamese and US officials agreed at a meeting in Paris on Wednesday to 'focus maximum efforts to achieve the best results in the third technical negotiation round' scheduled for the first half of June, Vietnam's trade ministry said in a statement yesterday.
Trade minister Nguyen Hong Dien affirmed Vietnam's 'determination and goodwill' to reach an agreement with the United States, while his American counterpart Jamieson Greer said a deal would be important for Washington as well as Hanoi, according to the statement.
Meanwhile, a delegation from Vietnam's agriculture ministry visiting the United States signed memorandums of understanding (MOU) to buy raw materials for animal feed from Ohio worth US$600mil (RM2.5bil), the ministry said in a separate statement on its website yesterday.
That comes after Vietnam announced five MOUs to buy products worth around US$800mil (RM3.4bil) from Iowa over three years, including soybean meal, corn, wheat, dried soybeans and dried distillers grains.
The South-East Asian country was expected to sign deals with the United States to buy more than US$2bil (RM8.5bil) worth of agricultural products in total, the statement added.
Vietnam has been seeking help to solve the tariff stand-off from several US tech and industry giants, including Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Google. — AFP
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