WASHINGTON: US efforts to forge a “21st Century” trade agreement with Vietnam and 10 other countries in the Asia Pacific region are running into problems mired in the past, including a textile trade policy that US industry does not want to give up.
The US hopes to finish talks on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact by the end of the year, but Vietnam says the sides are nowhere close on its biggest priority: Market access for its clothing and footwear exports.
The latest US offer “is really, really difficult for us to accept,” Nguyen Vu Tung, Deputy Chief of mission at Vietnam’s embassy in Washington, said.
He was speaking during a panel discussion at The Wilson Center, a foreign policy think tank.
Unless the two sides can reach a breakthrough, “I’m really concerned about the prospect of Vietnam to conclude the successful negotiation of Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Tung said.
The problem is rooted in decades of tariff protection for the US textile industry, which now employs fewer than 300,000 workers compared to more than two million in the 1970s.
Vietnam, one of the world’s largest clothing exporters, wants the US to phase out those tariffs, just as the US is pressing Vietnam to eliminate tariffs on US agricultural and manufactured goods.
Washington is also pushing Vietnam to address a slate of “21st Century” trade concerns.
Those include new rules for the trade activities of Vietnam’s state-owned enterprises, better protections for US intellectual property, enforceable labour and environmental provisions and more foreign participation in Vietnam’s government procurement market.
“There are really difficult things for us to accept, but we go along with that because we see that accepting these difficult conditions... will help our economy,” Tung said
REUTERS
