David Thomas: “House Joint Resolution 51, as appropriate with its title, deals with a trade agreement with the Socialist Republic of…”

“House Joint Resolution 51, as appropriate with its title, deals with a trade agreement with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This is the most comprehensive trade agreement with a nonmarket economy country that the United States has ever entered into. That is why I want to underscore that it is with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Normal trade relations used to be called Most Favored Nation treatment, and frankly, it was a misnomer; most nations receive Most Favored Nation treatment. And so a few years ago we appropriately changed the terminology. I think, therefore, if we are asking that we have normal trade relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, who do we not have normal trade relations with? And in this part of the world, in the Far East, there are basically two nations that do not enjoy normal trading relations with the United States. Those are Laos and North Korea. All other countries in the Far East enjoy this status. The idea of having a bilateral trade agreement with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in a comprehensive way allows us to deal with access in areas of industrial and agricultural goods, in services, in intellectual property rights, in investment, and in the transparency of all of those activities.”