US urged to recognize Vietnam as a market economy

Mar 26, 2024 / 08:14 PM

The US expresses its strong support for Vietnam's development in high-tech sectors, energy transition, climate change adaptation, and dealing with the legacy of war.

Vietnam looks forward to strengthening cooperation with the US across all sectors and urges the latter to promptly recognize the country as a market economy.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Source: VNA

Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son shared the view during a meeting with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on March 25, during his visit to the US to co-chair the first Vietnam-US annual dialogue between the foreign ministers of the two countries.

During the meeting, Sullivan reaffirmed the value the US places on its relationship with Vietnam and the US position of supporting an independent, self-reliant, and prosperous Vietnam with an increasingly important role in Southeast Asia and on the international stage. He emphasized the US’s support for Vietnam's development in high-tech sectors, energy transition, climate change adaptation, and efforts to address war aftermaths.

Son reiterated Vietnam's independent, self-reliant, peaceful, friendly, diversified, and multilateral foreign policy and stressed the strategic importance of the partnership between Vietnam and the US.

He called on both sides to continue to enhance cooperation, prioritize well-prepared exchanges and contacts between the two countries, maintain existing dialogue mechanisms, explore new mechanisms, including addressing remaining differences, and work together to deal with the aftermath of the war. He also called for expanding economic and trade cooperation and scientific and technological collaboration and urged the US to promptly grant Vietnam the market economy status.

On this occasion, Sullivan conveyed President Joe Biden's greetings and appreciation to General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Vietnam's senior leadership.

Son also extended the greetings of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Vietnam's senior leadership to President Joe Biden and invited Sullivan to visit Vietnam soon.

The Minister and USAID Director Samantha Power.

Addressing war aftermaths

On the same day, Son met with the Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power.

Power stated that USAID prioritizes its relationship with Vietnam, continuing to focus on working together to address war aftermaths, including dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa Airbase, enhancing DNA identification capacity for Vietnamese scientists to search for and identify the remains of Vietnamese soldiers who died in the war, enhancing healthcare and social services to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, supporting Vietnam in mitigating the impacts of climate change, sustainable development, human resource development, healthcare infrastructure development, and disease control.

Son highly appreciated USAID's support for Vietnam and requested the agency to continue allocating resources to implement projects in Vietnam, explore new cooperation areas such as high-quality human resource training, climate change adaptation, and energy transition, and expand Fulbright University into a regional training center. The two sides also agreed to continue close coordination in the approval and effective implementation of USAID projects in Vietnam, contributing to the robust, profound, and substantive development of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Vietnam and the US across all fields.