Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has said his country’s top leader recently chatted with Donald Trump and is ready to deal with the new US administration.
Advertisement
“Our Party General Secretary To Lam has spoken with President Trump on telephone,” and his government has made “some approaches” to Trump’s administration, Chinh told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. “We think we can handle the relationship with the US.”
The Southeast Asian government is pursuing an ambitious goal of boosting growth to at least 8 per cent this year but faces uncertainty over the prospect of tariffs.
Vietnam was a major beneficiary of the first US-China trade war, but its ballooning trade imbalance with the US and Trump’s determination to bring more manufacturing jobs back home makes it a target for protectionist policies.
Chinh said Vietnam was “working on solutions” to rebalance its trade surplus with the United States, reiterating a promise to buy Boeing Co. planes, and expressing an interest in purchasing other American hi-tech items.
Advertisement
“If playing golf can help bring benefits to my country and my people, then I can play golf all day long,” Chinh said, eliciting chuckles from the audience, as he responded to a question on whether he’d be willing to travel to Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to meet and play a round with the US president.