Highlights of the US-Vietnam Trade Agreement

Normal Trade Relations (formerly known as MFN), meaning neither country can treat goods from the other differently than goods from a third country. Vietnam already has NTR with almost all of its trading partners other than the US, and the US already grants it to all but four of its trading partners. NTR will still be subject to annual review by Congress (as, for example, China has been), thus it is not yet permanent (PNTR).

· National Treatment: As per the provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), each country should treat foreign companies and imported goods the same as domestic ones under the law. Exceptions include television, banking, mining, telecommunications, transportation and fishing. Vietnam reportedly won concessions on the list of exceptions in late negotiations.

· Tariff reductions, from an average of 40% phased down to an average of 3% over a period of 3-10 years, depending on the item. For instance, Vietnamese clothing exports will fall from an average 68.9% to 13.4%; footwear from 33% to 5.6%.

· Elimination of most import and export quotas over periods ranging from 3-7 years for most items. Over 300 separate classifications of goods are listed in the agreement.

· US corporations and individuals can enter into joint ventures in Vietnam within three years, 100% ownership within seven.

· Agreement to follow existing conventions on intellectual property rights, including copyrights, trademarks and patents, superseding the copyright agreement signed in Hanoi in June 1997.

· Improved market access and other provisions for trade in services, following the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

Sources: USTR, Vietnam Investment Review. The complete trade agreement text (nearly 200 pages) is online at http://www.ustr.gov/new/text.html.

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From an epidemiological standpoint, it is indeed very difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of a disorder. Until all other possible causes have been eliminated, one can never claim with 100% certainty that one discrete exposure was responsible. There could well be children labeled as “Agent Orange victims” who suffered their disabilities from other sources. However, it is misleading and evasive to claim that the truth of Agent Orange is therefore unknowable. Whether a particular individual was affected by dioxin or not, the aggregate data points clearly to the fact that many, many Vietnamese, and a significant but far smaller number of Americans, have been.

The US’s denial of responsibility for Agent Orange victims corresponds to similar dissembling in other cases of known toxic contamination around current and former US military facilities, including those in the Philippines, Okinawa and Puerto Rico. State Department and Pentagon officials have first tried to deny the existence or scope of a problem, then pointed to convenient legal technicalities as grounds for dodging any action. The logic behind this policy is clear: as officials state in private, accepting these costs worldwide would be extremely expensive. The US currently has no budget for overseas military base cleanup, while at least some regulations and funding exist for closed bases in America, many of which are also affected. More research is urgently needed, and as the Hatfield Group report concludes, comprehensive findings of Agent Orange and other chemical contamination “would have worldwide applications.” As Madame Binh recently told a group of visiting French journalists, “the US should take responsibility for resolving this issue.”

Trade and Development: Building a Common Future?

For the Vietnamese government, resolving differences with the US forms part of the national priority of economic development. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently summarized this agenda as “poverty reduction, accelerating the market economy and boosting international integration.” But postwar political pressure in Washington has combined with debates in the Communist Party leadership to result in extremely slow accelerations and boosts. The US, on its part, has waffled back and forth between looking backwards to isolation and an emphasis on trade above all else.