The upcoming State visit of US President Donald Trump to Vietnam on November 11-12 is expected to enable further growth of the Vietnam-US ties in the future.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (L) meets US President Donald Trump at the White House during his US trip in May 2017

The visit, made in the first year of Trump’s working tenure, is taking place at a time when the Vietnam-US comprehensive partnership is progressing, especially after the US visit of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in May 2017. The two sides have maintained exchanges of delegations and have actively been implementing agreements reached during the visit.

Since Vietnam and the US set up comprehensive partnership in July 2013, their ties have seen positive development in both bilateral and multilateral aspects on the basis of respecting each other’s territory, political institution and development path and for interest of both sides.

After President Donald Trump took office, a number of high-level visits were organized. In April 2017, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh made an official visit to the US. From May 29-31, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc toured the US following Trump’s invitation. Partnership between the two legislative bodies has been growing.

Many opportunities are being created in bilateral partnership as the ties across politics, diplomacy, economy and trade have been strengthened, along with effective collaboration in science-technology, defence-security, education, people-to-people contact, war aftermath settlement, as well as regional and international matters of shared concern.

Since 2005, the US has become one of the leading trade partners of Vietnam, with two-way trade rising 20 percent in recent years. 

As of November 2016, the US ranked 8th out of 112 foreign investors in Vietnam with 815 projects worth 10.07 billion USD. The US was the ninth largest market of Vietnamese investors with 147 projects totaling 571.38 million USD. 

The number of US tourists to Vietnam reached 552,700 in 2016, a year-on-year rise of 12.8 percent.

Both sides restarted technical meeting of the Council on Bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement on March 27-28, 2017. 

During a Vietnam visit by President Barack Obama in May last year, the two sides issued the joint announcements on partnership in climate change and wildlife trafficking combat. Accordingly, the US will support Vietnam with 60 million USD to cope with climate change and another 10 million USD to fight wildlife trafficking in five years.

Regarding education, there are more than 31,000 Vietnamese students and apprentices in the US at present, turning Vietnam into the sixth biggest source of foreign students in the US. The Fulbright University Vietnam has been actively implemented while first moves have been made to carry out the Peace Corps programme.

Bilateral coordination has been enhanced at many multilateral organisations and forums to which both countries are members such as the UN, ASEAN, East Asia Summit, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus.

The two countries have also worked together in global issues such as climate change response, food security, energy and water resources, trans-national crime fight.

They have maintained annual dialogues on human rights with straightforward and constructive spirit, not letting differences hamper the development of their relations.-VNA