The Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs Luke Lindberg recently led a group of farmers to Vietnam on an agricultural trade mission and we spoke with Under Secretary Lindberg to get his insights on those discussions.
Under Secretary Lindberg said, “The Vietnam one to me was a great story of opportunity. So the U.S.-Vietnam economic relationship is one that’s very lopsided. In fact, we have a $200 billion trade deficit with Vietnam across all sectors, not just agriculture. The president believes that is absolutely unacceptable. Trade should be balanced and reciprocal, and today it’s not. And so Vietnam recognizes that. They realize if they want to continue to have the access to the U.S. market that many of their industries benefit from, they need to find more things for America to buy to balance that trading relationship, and there is no better sector than in agriculture.”
“This past year, because we’ve made progress with Vietnam, we had record years in corn, tree nuts, cotton, wheat, all had their best years ever in exports to Vietnam. They’re currently implementing an E10 blend. They’re actually considering, according to their trade minister, when I talked to him when I was out there, expediting an E20 blend, which would give our ethanol producers and our corn farmers even more market access opportunity. So we are leveraging those relationships that have really been unbalanced in the past to open up new and very large opportunities for U.S. farmers,” said Lindberg.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.