Improving the competitiveness of the national economy and that of Vietnamese businesses to make the most of the opportunities that integration might bring about has become an urgent task.

By the end of 2014, TPP members underwent 19 official rounds of negotiations and many others at chief negotiator and ministerial levels along with high-level meetings. They had finalized negotiations on cooperation and capacity building; Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs); For the development, cohesion policy and the environment facilitating the supply chain; Customs; Food safety and animal and plant quarantine; Telecommunications; Competition policy (not including the issue of State-owned enterprises). 

Feb 10 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday vowed to keep pushing for rules against currency cheating in trade deals as they unveiled bipartisan legislation to stop America's trading partners from manipulating exchange rates. The bill comes on top of efforts to include rules against deliberate weakening of currencies in a Pacific trade agreement and in upcoming legislation to fast track trade deals through Congress.

HA NOI (VNS) — The Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces expect to export seafood and rice worth US$10.2 billion this year, according to the Can Tho Statistics Office. The provinces reported $850 million worth of exports for seafood and rice in January alone. The office estimates that to achieve this target, the region will have to produce 3.7 million tonnes of seafood to meet demand for raw material from 198 seafood processing factories in the region.

TOKYO — Japan and Mongolia signed a free trade agreement Tuesday that is expected to open the landlocked frontier market to more Japanese auto exports and strengthen Tokyo’s leverage with a key partner in its dealings with North Korea. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Mongolian counterpart Chimed Saikhanbileg signed the agreement at a summit in Tokyo.

It is well known that the many bilateral FTAs signed to date in Asia have not brought significant commercial or domestic reform or benefits. For one thing, bilateral ‘free trade agreements’ (which are preferential in character) are less likely to deliver substantial trade opening benefits unless the partners to them are a very large part of global trade, like the United States, Europe and China are for example.

China may establish a free trade zone with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in the future, says the Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov. It would make trade with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and soon Kyrgyzstan tariff-free.

The critics were right. Ten years after the Australia–United States free trade agreement (AUSFTA) came into force, new analysis of the data shows that the agreement diverted trade away from the lowest cost sources. Australia and the United States have reduced their trade by US$53 billion with rest of the world and are worse off than they would have been without the agreement.

In principle, almost everyone's in favor of free trade. It promotes international harmony, raises wages, helps economies grow. It's an article of historical faith that the enactment of harsh protective U.S. tariffs in 1930 contributed to the Great Depression. And who wants that?

BEIJING, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- The second round of negotiations on an upgraded China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) has made "notable progress", China's Ministry of Commerce said on Friday. Service trade, investment, economic cooperation, simplified trade procedures were discussed during the negotiation, the ministry said. Launched in 2010, CAFTA has become the largest free trade area among developing countries. China proposed "an upgraded version" of CAFTA in September of 2013.