Washington: Vietnam and the US have signed $8 billion in deals, including a massive engine contract with a Vietnamese budget carrier, officials said.
The deals were announced during a visit by Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to the White House on Wednesday, a trip aimed at drumming up trade ties after US President Donald Trump pulled out of a massive Asia-Pacific trade pact earlier this year, decrying it as a “job killer”.
Vietnam, which stood to gain enormously from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) before the US pullout, has been aggressively courting Washington to bolster business ties, and Phuc is the first Southeast Asian leader to visit Trump’s White House.
The new deals saw Vietjet sign a 12-year engine contract worth $3.58 billion with CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric and Safran. The airline also signed a separate deal worth $1 billion with GE Capital Aviation Services in aircraft financing.
“We strongly believe that this agreement will promote economic and trade exchange between the two countries and create millions (of) jobs for the two peoples,” said Vietjet CEO Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, who is the communist country’s first and only female billionaire.
The country’s largest low-cost carrier, Vietjet is best-known for air hostesses sporting bikinis on some of its flights. The company said it raked in $1.21 billion in revenues last year and its shares have soared since its market debut in February.
The other new deals, signed in the sectors of hospitality, science and technology, academia and energy, come as Washington opts for bilateral agreements over sprawling free trade pacts. Trump has singled out Vietnam as one of the countries allegedly stealing American jobs and has vowed to boost exports to the fast-growing nation to narrow the $32 billion trade deficit tipped in Hanoi’s favour.
Trump will visit Vietnam in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit. — AFP
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