Trump offers a small consolation to Vietnam

President Donald Trump hailed billions of dollars of deals between Vietnam and the United States on Wednesday afternoon, even as he used his Wednesday afternoon visit with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to warn the southeast Asian nation about its trade imbalance with the United States.

The deals, which were signed by companies including General Electric and Caterpillar, are expected to amount to between $15 billion and $17 billion.

“They just made a very large order in the United States — and we appreciate that — for many billions of dollars, which means jobs for the United States and great, great equipment for Vietnam,” Mr. Trump said.

Speaking at a dinner for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tuesday night, Mr. Phuc said the new deals would be concentrated largely in the high-tech sector. Even as Vietnam exports products like fish, seafood, apparel and footwear to the United States, it is a hungry consumer of U.S. corn, soybeans, planes and machinery, he said.

But the newly announced deals may be little comfort for Vietnam after the collapse of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-country trade deal that Mr. Trump officially withdrew from shortly after he entered office.

Economists say Vietnam would have been one of the biggest winners of the deal. A 2016 study by the Peterson Institute of International Economics found that the Obama-era trade deal would have increased Vietnam's gross domestic product by 8.1 percent by 2030, the most of any country in the deal, and expanded its exports by one-fifth. Economists expected the deal to expand access to foreign markets for Vietnamese producers of apparel, footwear and seafood, as well as stimulate economic reforms within the country.

In comparison, the TPP would have boosted U.S. GDP 0.5 percent and Japanese GDP 2.5 percent by 2030, Peterson estimated. Even countries with smaller economies, like Brunei and Peru, would not see as large of a percentage increase as Vietnam would have, according to Peterson's estimates.

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Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Banking Committee — Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho and Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio — announced a plan Wednesday to strengthen sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine and Syria, as well as internet intrusions in the U.S.

The proposal is seen as a signal that some in Congress intend to push back on the Trump administration’s moves to explore an improvement in relations with Moscow.

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Mr. Trump has been handing out his cellphone number to world leaders and urging them to call him directly, an unusual invitation that breaks diplomatic protocol and is raising concerns about the security and secrecy of the U.S. commander in chief’s communications.