No call for US to fret over Vietnam trade surplus

By Anh Tu   September 10, 2018 | 05:42 am PT
No call for US to fret over Vietnam trade surplus
Containers are loaded at a port in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Reuters/Kham
The U.S. shouldn’t be concerned about its current trade deficit with Vietnam, Deputy PM Trinh Dinh Dung said Monday.

Speaking at the one-day U.S.-Vietnam Business Summit in Hanoi, Dung said that increasing bilateral trade between the two countries was having a balancing effect, and there was no reason to be concerned.

Gelbert Kaplan, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade with the U.S. Department of Commerce, said Vietnam ranked fifth among the countries with which the US had the highest trade deficit last year. In Southeast Asia, it ranked the highest, he added.

But Dung noted that trade turnover between Vietnam and the U.S. has been increasing significantly in recent years, from $7.8 billion in 2005 to $54 billion last year. It had reached $27.4 billion in the first half of this year, he said.

“For this reason, the U.S. doesn’t need to worry about Vietnam having a trade surplus. The balance of trade is getting more balanced,” he said.

Vietnam’s exports to the U.S. include agriculture produce, textiles and shoes, while it imports hi-tech products such as aircraft worth billions of dollars, the deputy PM said.

He added that as of June this year, the U.S. had 877 projects ongoing in Vietnam with a total capital of $9.37 billion, ranking it 10th among 128 countries and territories with direct investments in the country.

U.S. imports exceeded exports by $566 million last year, according to the U.S. official data.

The U.S. was the largest trading partner of Vietnam in the first eight months this year, with $30.2 billion in trade turnover, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment. 

 
 
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