Associated Press
WASHINGTON — U.S.-Vietnamese relations moved to a new level Wednesday with Senate approval of an agreement normalizing trade between the two former enemies.
The Senate’s 88-12 vote "represents an important step in the healing process," said Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., "a step that has been a long time in coming."
The House last month endorsed the measure, which now goes to President Bush. The administration strongly backs the trade agreement that was negotiated by the Clinton White House last year.
Under the agreement, Vietnam would benefit from the same low tariffs the United States sets for its other trading partners. In return, Vietnam is to reduce its tariffs, eliminate nontariff barriers, protect intellectual property rights and open its markets to American service and investment companies.
Washington state’s Democratic senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray both supported the bill.
The United States and Vietnam had no formal relations and limited contacts in the two decades after U.S. troops left Vietnam in 1973. The first President Bush initiated cooperation in such areas as accounting for MIAs. In 1994, President Clinton lifted the trade embargo, and the next year he established diplomatic relations. In 1998, he issued the first waiver making commercial deals with Vietnam eligible for U.S. government loans and credit guarantees.
But Vietnam has remained one of only six nations denied normal trade relations, subjecting Vietnamese goods to far higher tariffs. The other countries are Afghanistan, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Yugoslavia.
Vietnam is the world’s 14th most populous nation, with 80 million people, but trade with the United States was only about $1.2 billion last year. Estimates are that Vietnam’s exports to the United States, mainly shrimp, coffee and light manufactured goods, could more than double with normal trade relations.
Opposition to the deal came mainly from lawmakers who asserted that Vietnam has not fully cooperated in accounting for MIAs from the Vietnam War and should not be entitled to normal trade because of its poor human rights record.
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