HANOI (Reuters) -Vietnam’s Trade Minister Nguyen Hong Dien met officials of U.S. firms such as Excelerate Energy, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX and Google during a trip to Washington for tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, state media said on Wednesday.
Vietnam wants the meetings to show President Donald Trump that it wishes to boost ties with the U.S. and facilitate U.S. investment in the country, Vietnam News Agency reported.
“The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Vietnam and the U.S. has been strongly promoting and creating favourable conditions for U.S. companies to invest and do business smoothly in Vietnam,” the report cited Dien as saying.
Vietnam and the U.S. this week started a second round of trade negotiations in Washington, as the Southeast Asian industrial hub seeks a deal to avoid a threatened 46% tariff rate on Vietnamese goods.
Dien said Vietnam wanted to boost its cooperation with Lockheed Martin as the country plans to launch a new-generation communication satellite late next year, according to the report.
Last year, sources said there were talks on sales of Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules military transport planes to Hanoi.
At his meeting with SpaceX government affairs official Tim Hughes, Dien showed his appreciation for the company’s plan to invest $1.5 billion in Starlink satellite services in the country, and urged it to expand investment to other areas such as clean energy, information technology and high-tech training.
Meeting with Excelerate executives, Dien said the company’s plan to sell American liquefied natural gas to Vietnam is in line with the country’s energy development strategy.
Hanoi has implemented several measures to narrow its trade surplus with the U.S., which exceeded $123 billion last year, including by cutting tariffs on U.S. goods and tackling shipments of Chinese goods to the U.S. via its territory.
The finance ministry said on Tuesday Vietnamese companies are also planning to build logistics centres and an industrial park in the U.S. to facilitate bilateral trade and investment.
(Reporting by Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen; editing by John Mair and Stephen Coates)
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