U.S. Presses Vietnam on Food Imports to Narrow Trade Gap

Vietnam must clear the backlog of U.S. imports, especially farm goods, to narrow the two countries’ trade imbalance, a U.S. agricultural official said as U.S. farmers seek to make up for lost sales in the trade war with China.

Ted McKinney, undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Vietnam’s approval process is “just not working,” leading to delays for U.S. exporters.

“There has been quite a backlog of the Vietnamese government approving meat and poultry plants that could export to Vietnam, and some other things that were just quite slow; biotechnology, for example, ...