Dien, at the meeting with the press on the occasion of US President Biden’s visit to Vietnam, said the Vietnam-US economic and trade relationship has complementary characteristics. The US has high demand for certain farm produce for which Vietnam has advantages with favorable natural conditions and its workforce, such as textiles and garments, footwear and electronics. 

Meanwhile, Vietnam wants to import input materials for domestic production from the US, and source products such as cotton, animal feed, maize, soybean, chemicals, machines and technology.

"The increase in importing these source products from the US creates an important advantage - helping 'clean up' the supply chain when input materials for production have clear and certified origin," Dien said.

With the current high trade growth rate of over 20 percent per annum, the US continues to be the largest export market for Vietnam.

Amid Vietnam-US strengthening of exchanges to prepare for high-level visits and the two sides’ statement on upgrading their relationship to comprehensive strategic partnership, the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) and the US Department of Commerce (DOC) have had many working sessions and frank exchanges through different channels about excluding Vietnam from the list of non-market economies.

This will not only bring more favorable conditions to Vietnam’s enterprises in trade remedy cases, but also help improve Vietnam’s role and position as well as foreign investors’ confidence.

In the time to come, MOIT will continue promoting discussions with the US on the possibility of applying a GSP (Generalised Scheme of Preference) for Vietnam. This is an important issue which has relations with Vietnam’s legitimate benefits, and at the same time help Vietnam’s exports to be treated more equally, like the treatment US’ current strategic partners are enjoying, thus bringing benefits to the business communities of both countries.

US ‘super-companies’ expected 

According to Dien, in order to minimize the risk of disruption and dependence, US businesses want to diversify their supply chains. This will give Vietnam the opportunity to expand production activities and participate more deeply in the US conglomerates’ global value chains. 

There have been clear signs of US large corporations, such as Intel, Apple, Google, Boeing and Walmart, considering expanding their supply chains in Vietnam. This requires Vietnam to design a reasonable master plan to help Vietnamese enterprises become important links in the global chains.

Tran Chung