By Kanishka Singh and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (REUTERS) – The new American Foreign Minister Marco Rubio conducted a telephone conversation on Friday with the Vietnamese vice -prime minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son, in which he encourages the trading ethics at Vietnam and also the shared worried about China discussed.
In the call, the first between the two top diplomats under the new government of US President Donald Trump, the two praised the 30th anniversary of relations between the US and Vietnam and the progress that was made under a comprehensive strategic partnership that the countries in 2023 had agreed, according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. said.
“The minister also discussed regional worries, including the aggressive behavior of China in the South Chinese Sea,” said the report.
While he praised the economic cooperation between the two countries, Rubio Vietnam encouraged to tackle trading debts, according to the report.
The American trade deficit with Vietnam was more than 110 billion dollars in the first eleven months of 2024, according to American figures released this month, while exports from the Southeast Asian industrial center grew in the middle of a record decrease in the currency of the currency ten compared to the dollar.
Although Vietnam has become an important American security partner, the large trade gap is seen by analysts as a high risk for the export -dependent country, in the midst of Trump’s threats with general rates on American imports.
This month’s American data shows that the American deficit with Vietnam has increased by almost 18% compared to the same period last year. It confirmed that the country led by the Communists in addition to the United States has the fourth highest trade surplus, only supplied by China, the European Union and Mexico.
Trump ended his first term in the White House with statements from the treasury of Vietnam and Switzerland as currency manipulators about their market interventions to weaken the value of their currency.
Vietnam, which regards the US as its largest market, is the home of large export -oriented industrial activities of American multinationals such as Apple (Nasdaq :), Google (Nasdaq :),, Nike (NYSE 🙂 And Intel (Nasdaq :).
