U.S. says ASEAN offers top business opportunities
U.S. says ASEAN offers top business opportunities
BANGKOK (Reuter): Acting U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce
Timothy Hauser said on Saturday Washington considered it a top
priority to boost the U.S. business presence in the seven-member
Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Hauser, leading a U.S. delegation to and Vietnam, said ASEAN
had rivaled or surpassed most emerging markets in potential for
U.S. export growth.
He told reporters and U.S. business executives in Asia at a
function here that U.S. exports to ASEAN totaled US$39 billion in
1995, slightly less than the $45 billion in exports to China,
Hong Kong and Taiwan.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
"It is a critically important region for the U.S. business
community. I am leading a group of 14 small and medium-sized
American companies to see business opportunities (in Thailand and
Vietnam)," he said at a press briefing.
Hauser was flying to Hanoi later on Saturday where he would
open a new U.S. commerce center to promote American trade and
investment in Vietnam.
"The center will represent a tangible, visible step to the
American business community that the government is in there
working with them to create conditions for expanded trade," he
told reporters.
Hauser said he would hold talks in Hanoi on high Vietnamese
import tariffs faced by U.S. products, protection of U.S.
intellectual property rights, and the absence in Vietnam of a
clear legal structure under which American and foreign companies
operated in the country.
He said any future decision by Washington to grant Vietnam the
Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, along with preferential tariffs
for Vietnamese products entering the U.S., must be preceded by a
bilateral trade pact still being negotiated.
The senior U.S. commerce department official said he asked
Thai officials to liberalize the fasting growing Thai auto
industry to benefit major and small independent American car and
auto parts producers.
Hauser said he did not specifically lobby for General Motors,
which is weighing a plan to open a big car assembly plant either
in Thailand or the Philippines.
Hauser said Thailand's 35 percent tariff on imported car part
materials, against its 20 percent tax on finished products, made
it tough for independent American auto parts makers to open
plants here.