Vietnamese Consul General in San Francisco, Hoang Anh Tuan took a photo with Bac Giang' lychees exported to Safeway supermarket system. (Photo: PA)

Recently, you has made several field trips to many states of the United States, what do you want to explore at each destination? Which stories impressed you the most?

The Consulate General of Viet Nam in San Francisco is assigned by the Government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to act as the focal point for developing relations between Viet Nam and 11 West Coast states of the United States, including California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado.

This is a large geographical area with a total area of 4.1 million square kilometers, 12 times larger than the area of Viet Nam, accounting for 41.8% of the total area of the US. The West Coast is famous for its natural beauty, with a long coastline and many large and important seaports. It also has a world-leading information technology hub Silicon Valley, has strongly developed mechanical engineering, manufacturing, and service industries, including tourism and cinema. Nearly 100 companies ranked in Fortune 500 list have headquarters in the West Coast, of which California has 53 companies, Washington has 11, Colorado has 10, Arizona has 8, Idaho has 3, Oregon has 2. The US West Coast is also home to many leading US educational institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, University of California, University of Washington...

With the scale, position and role as mentioned above, the potential for cooperation between Viet Nam and the West Coast of the United States in the fields of politics, economy, trade, investment, science and technology, education, etc, is huge.

In order to realize cooperation opportunities, for many years, the Consulate General of Viet Nam in San Francisco has actively coordinated with state governments, organizations and businesses to implement many effective activities. Right after being assigned the task, I decided that one of the focuses of my work is to continue to strengthen and promote relations between Viet Nam and the US states in the consular area, to seek and explore more new areas of cooperation. In about half a year since I arrived in San Francisco, I managed to visit and had meetings with the Governments of the States of California, Oregon, and Utah. The general impression is that the above-mentioned US states are very interested in, appreciate and wish to promote multi-faceted cooperation with Viet Nam.

Along with the development momentum of the bilateral relationship between Viet Nam and the US, how could cooperation among localities contribute to the common pace, bringing the bilateral relationship to a more profound development?

In the coming time, the cooperation among localities between the two countries play an important role in further boosting bilateral relations between Viet Nam and the US.

Cooperation among the localities of the two countries has great potential, which is an important part of the bilateral relationship. There are several key areas where cooperation can contribute to the development and promotion of relations between the localities of the two countries.

The first is trade and investment. Each state of the US can be considered a developed economy, many of which have the same economic size as the leading economies in the world. Strengthening economic cooperation with US states can create opportunities for Viet Nam to establish new cooperation frameworks, thereby creating a foundation for businesses of the two sides sharing business cooperation opportunities.

The second is education and training. As noted above, the West Coast states have high-quality, world-class university systems. Therefore, cooperation in this field will help improve the quality of education and training in Viet Nam and at the same time create favorable conditions for Vietnamese people to have access to new knowledge and skills.

The third is energy and the environment. Viet Nam has a growing demand for energy and sustainable development. Partnering with US states in the energy and environment sectors can help Viet Nam access new technologies, aid in developing renewable energy, and mitigate the effects of climate change.

Fourth is information technology. The West Coast States of the US are the world’s leading technology hubs. Cooperation in this field can help Viet Nam develop its information technology industry, apply artificial intelligence and develop modern communication services.

In general, cooperation between Viet Nam and the states and localities of the US is a very important channel, deepening the relationship, opening up many new cooperation opportunities, bringing benefits to both sides and contributing to the sustainable development of both countries.

Consul General Hoang Anh Tuan met with the Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles in June 2023. (Photo: PA)

VinFast has just announced the groundbreaking plan of an electric vehicle factory in North Carolina on July 28, how do you evaluate the putting of this meaningful “brick”?

The US is in the top 10 among 75 countries and territories, attracting much investment capital from Viet Nam. Up to now, Viet Nam has had 215 valid investment projects in the US, with a total registered investment capital of more than 1.11 billion USD with many well-known enterprises such as VinFast, FPT Software Co., Ltd., Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Viet Nam (VCB), etc.

Viet Nam’s investment in the US is a bright spot in the bilateral relationship between the two countries, especially proving the maturity, growth and prestige of Vietnamese enterprises when reaching out to the “big sea”. Not only in the field of investment, but also in trade with the US, we have also achieved many great achievements. Notably, most recently, in July 2023, we successfully brought the “Golden lychee” into the US market after the long efforts by the Consulate General to help Vietnamese businesses connect and mobilize support.

Among Viet Nam’s large - scale projects in the US, VinFast’s project to build an electric vehicle and battery factory in North Carolina (USA) must be mentioned. The project has an investment of up to 2 billion USD.

The event that VinFast announced the launching of an electric vehicle factory in North Carolina (USA) on July 28 is an important event, not only for VinFast Company, Vingroup but also a historical milestone of Viet Nam’s auto industry, which is realizing Viet Nam’s aspiration to reach out to the big sea, affirming that Viet Nam has successfully mastered and manufactured high-tech products for the world’s most competitive and fiercely demanding international markets. This event is considered a successful fruit in the Viet Nam - US cooperation relationship, a meaningful gift for the time when the two countries celebrate the 10^th anniversary of establishing the Comprehensive Partnership in 2023.

In the opposite direction, do you have any plans to push more US investment flows to Viet Nam in the near future?

Personally, I have a lot of ambitious plans to promote economic cooperation between Viet Nam and the US to the further development, raising the relationship between the two countries to a new height.

For the investment field, in my opinion, special attention should be paid to the approaching and attracting US investment in the following directions:

To promote connection and investment cooperation in large projects with high technology content, contributing to the integration of Viet Nam into the global semiconductor chip production supply chain; focus on attracting US investment projects in the fields of renewable energy, clean energy (green FDI projects) and digital transformation projects;

To focus on approaching, mobilizing and attracting investment capital from financial institutions and investment funds of the US to introduce and promote investment in Vietnamese national projects calling for foreign investment, start-ups projects in Viet Nam; create connection with the National Innovation Center (NIC) to deploy cooperation;

To connect and mobilize a number of transnational corporations to build research and development centers for technology incubators in association with human resource training, promoting connectivity, introducing high-tech enterprises and technology experts from the US to Viet Nam for investment and business cooperation, contributing to the development of Viet Nam’s digital economy, thereby forming a startup ecosystem, promoting our industrial network, and taking full advantage of the Fourth Industrial revolution (4.0).