During a press briefing on Friday, Secretary Of State Marco Rubio was asked a question about a trade deal signed between the United States and Vietnam.
00:00Secretary, if I can ask a question about your meeting with Vietnam, a country with one of the largest trade surpluses with the U.S., we've heard that there was maybe some misunderstanding about the agreement announced last week for a 20 percent tariff, that the Vietnamese weren't confident that that was fully agreed to, that perhaps they were looking for a 10 to 15 percent tariff.
00:24Was that an issue that they raised trying to lower their tariff level? Was that the tariff an issue that they raised during the bilateral meeting?
00:31Well, the issue of trade was raised. I'm not the negotiator on trade and neither is the foreign minister and so we weren't here to negotiate a trade deal.
00:40I'll refer you to our trade negotiators as far as the status of that. Clearly, Vietnam feels that if they enter into an agreement with the United States,
00:48they want to have a tariff rate that's at least as good as, if not better, than other countries that don't have a trade agreement with us.
00:54But I'll leave, you know, you all have to, I have to refer you to our negotiators because I just don't know what the status of those negotiations are at this point.
01:01The President did announce that there was an agreement reached with Vietnam and yet Vietnam is saying that they never reached that agreement.
01:07So they must have raised this issue with you today.
01:09No, I mean that, neither of that, that issue, it just wasn't a trade meeting. We didn't, I'm not saying it's not a relevant issue,
01:15it's just not what the purpose of our meeting was about today. We talked about a lot of other issues,
01:20but perhaps the reason why it wasn't raised is because I'm not the trade negotiator and these are, these were not trade.
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