April 5, 2010

Vietnam could be faced with a range of opportunities to accelerate trade with the US this year but first it needs to introduce a number of appropriate solutions to negotiate various technical barriers set by the US market, trade experts said.

Tran Duy Dong from the Ministry of Industry and Trade's America Department, reported that since Vietnam and the US signed a bilateral trade agreement in 2001, two-way trade between the two countries has spiralled from US$1 billion in 2001 to US$12 billion in 2008.

The department has forecast that the country's exports to the US this year would post at least a 10% increase over 2009.

Despite the optimistic views on the prospects of the country's exports to the vast US market, there remain some very real technical barriers that have already affected Vietnamese exporters and will continue to do so in the future.

After the storm of the recent economic crisis, the US was forced to revise its economic policy, including the establishing more technical barriers and imposing anti-dumping taxes on imported goods to protect its domestically made products and cutting its volume of imports.

One example is the case of Vietnamese tra and basa fish. Even though these products are currently suffering losses from anti-dumping taxes, the USDA intends to reclassify them as "catfish" with the aim of putting them under the direct supervision of the Farm Bill.

Under the terms of the Farm Bill, Vietnamese tra and basa fish eligible for export to the US market must be raised in line with the standards applied to catfish bred in the north-eastern region of the US.

This will cause huge difficulties for Vietnam's tra and basa fish exporters as the country's methods of breeding the fish are different from those in the US.

In addition to the Farm Bill, Vietnamese seafood is also facing anti-bioterrorism regulations mandated by the FDA.

Vietnamese businesses need to frequently update themselves with the latest US regulations and should enter partnerships with US importers to facilitate the marketing and distribution of imported goods as well as payment, trade experts said.