U.S., Vietnam Pact Holds Promise For Manufacturers

May 15, 2006
Forty years ago, a bilateral market access agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam, then at war, would have been unthinkable. It's now about to be a reality, one that will benefit U.S. manufacturers and pave the way for Vietnam to join the 149-member ...

Forty years ago, a bilateral market access agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam, then at war, would have been unthinkable. It's now about to be a reality, one that will benefit U.S. manufacturers and pave the way for Vietnam to join the 149-member World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. and Vietnam reached an agreement in principle during the past weekend.

The pending agreement, when implemented, "opens a new and growing market for American agricultural goods, services, such as financial services, and manufactured products," explained Rob Portman, current U.S. Trade Representative and director designate of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

A formal signing of the agreement will occur "in the near future," once the U.S. and Vietnam have completed remaining legal steps to implementation," said Portman's office. Among the remaining steps is for the U.S. Congress to grant Vietnam "permanent normal trade relations" status, extending to the southeast Asian nation the same non-discriminatory treatment that most other U.S. trading partners have. Vietnam, which has been working on accession to the WTO since 1995, is still in the process of enacting legislation that will allow it to apply for WTO membership.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

 John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.
      
      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).
      
      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.
      
      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”
      
      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.
      
      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
      

 

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