HANOI: The new U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius, shared his views on how ties between the two countries will grow, particularly in trade and investment, and his priorities during his office term.
First of all, when you look at Southeast Asia, broadly the United States is the number one investor. But why the United States isn’t the number one investor in Vietnam and I think that there are a couple of reasons. I think that we can become the number one in the future, but we have to work seriously together in order to become number one.
I think the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is going to give us tremendous opportunities to increase U.S. trade with and investment in Vietnam.
When I ask American businesses what else is important to them, they tell me that they really want a level playing field… they want fairness, transparency, and predictability.
A couple of days ago, I spoke to the chairman of the People’s Committee (of HCMC), and I said that we have a tremendous opportunity with TPP. This is what American investors are interested in. And I asked him, can we have a specific mechanism for talking to the People’s Committee. When there’s a problem that an American investor encounters here, he or she will have a specific place to go to resolve that problem. The chairman said, “Yes, we can have that mechanism.” So I will follow up with him right away, and we will establish that mechanism.
The good news is that there are now many more opportunities for having dialogues on these issues. There’s the Vietnam Trade Facilitation Alliance, the Vietnam Business Forum. So there are more opportunities than there were before to have exchanges about how we can improve the trade and investment environment.
And there’s much, much more trade and investment than there was back then. So now we’re talking about US$30 billion (in bilateral trade) a year, when before it was a very small number of business people here and a very small amount of trade.
