TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday tried to reassure people after recent reports raised growing concerns over the U.S-Vietnam trade deal the president announced more than two weeks ago.
Credit：China Central Television
Trump said the U.S.-Vietnam deal was close to completion, and he could release details of the agreement, but didn’t think it was necessary. "Well, I might. I don't think it matters how much you release of the deal. We have a Vietnam deal, and I would say that that deal is being pretty well set," Trump replied when asked if he planned to release details of the trade pact with Vietnam.
Trump on July 2 said on his social media platform Truth Social that he made a trade deal with Vietnam after speaking with To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee. Touting the deal as “a Great Deal of Cooperation between our two Countries”, Trump said the two sides agreed that the U.S. would impose 20% tariffs on all goods imported from Vietnam and 40% tariffs on “any Transshipping.”
The Vietnamese government since then has not confirmed the deal including the 20% tariffs, neither the Trump administration offered any further details about the official text of the agreement.
Vietnam thought it had reached a preliminary deal with the U.S. to lower its tariff level to around 11%, a massive cut from the reciprocal tariff rate of 40% that the Trump administration implemented in early April, but Trump, at the last minute, raised the rate to 20%, the Politico reported on July 10. As a result, the report noted, Hanoi has not formally accepted a key part of the agreement.
Vietnamese negotiators had not agreed to the 20% rate Trump announced last week, and the president disregarded that figure in his phone call with To Lam, the report cited people familiar with the matter. Trump’s announcement stunned the outside U.S. groups who had been tracking the talks, according to a lobbyist, who described the Vietnamese government’s reaction as “surprise, as well as disappointment and anger.”
A Bloomberg report on July 11 echoed the Politico, citing sources that Vietnam’s leadership was caught off guard by Trump’s announcement that it agreed to a 20% tariff, and the Southeast Asian nation is still seeking to lower the rate. Lam was said to tell the Vietnamese negotiating team to keep working to bring the tariff rate down straight after his phone call with Trump on July 2.