Donald trump

The Hanoitimes – The two leaders agree that a strong bilateral relation will bring benefits to businesses and people of the two countries.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday [December 22] held a phone talk with US President Donald Trump over the bilateral relations, including recent investigation on Vietnam initiated by the US Trade Representative (USTR) under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 regarding currency undervaluation and wood products.

Prime Minister Phuc during the talks. Photo: Quang Hieu.

The US Treasury Department on December 16 labeled Vietnam and Switzerland as currency manipulators, along with adding three new names, including Taiwan, Thailand and India in a watch list of countries and territories it suspects of deliberately devaluing their currencies against the dollar.

Others on the list include China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Singapore and Malaysia.

Under its semi-annual currency manipulation report, the Treasury stated Vietnam had acted to gain “unfair competitive advantage in international trade as well.”

In the phone talk with Mr. Trump, the Vietnam PM said Vietnam is a developing country with limited economic capability. “The main objective in Vietnam’s monetary policy management is to control the inflation and stabilize macro-economic conditions, not for unfair gains in global trade,” Mr. Phuc stated.

“Vietnamese government agencies will continue to cooperate with the US counterparts to resolve issues of shared concern between the two countries, aiming to ensure a stabilized, balanced and sustainable trade relations for mutual benefits,” informed the Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) in a statement.

Both leaders agreed that the Vietnam-US relations have been growing strongly in all spheres after 25 years of the establishment of diplomatic relations, and especially in recent years, while expressing strong belief that a stable bilateral relation will bring benefits to people of the two countries, with cooperation in trade and investment as one of the key pillars.

A strong, independent and prosperous Vietnam with growing influence in the region is the desire of the Vietnamese people and in line with US interests.

On this occasion, Mr. Phuc congratulated the US President on the successful development of two Covid-19 vaccines in a record time.

Mr. Trump added he loves Vietnam and its people, saying he looks forward to visiting the country again in a coming time.

The Hanoitimes – America has profoundly changed in the twilight of Trump’s presidency and will profoundly, too, change during the upcoming Joe Biden’s presidency.

The reason might have been the idiom “Man proposes, God disposes” but it was his own faults that US incumbent President Donald Trump lost this year’s presidential election. Until now, he is still refusing to concede his deselection not only because he could not resist the temptation of power but also because he could never jump out from his own shadow to publicly admit being defeated, especially by former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden. He will have to leave the White House soon but certainly without conceding the failure.

US President Donald Trump waves to supporters after arriving on Air Force One at the Palm Beach International Airport to spend Easter weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort on April 18, 2019 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Getty Images/AFP)

Denying defeat, Trump could no longer avoid or delay Joe Biden’s so-called transition process after having lost his battles at the courts in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as after Georgia and Michigan officially certificated Joe Biden as election winner. The process of election certifications is still going on in some states,but Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump has definitely become irreversible.

It must be some kinds of ironies of Trump’s life and fate because he once had the political instinct to climb Olympus Mount in 2016 but then totally lost it or dropped it during his term in office and his reelection campaign. It must be bitter, very bitter for him to have lost this year’s election to someone he used to mock as “Sleepy Joe.” The more proud he can be of the nearly 74 million voters he got in this election, four million more than in 2016, the more disappointed he must be to have been defeated by Sleepy Joe. Joe’s victory over him has been too clear and convincing with some 80 million voters and 306 out of 538 electoral votes. His claims of Democratic electoral frauds could only serve to comfort himself and his supporters but cannot alter the truth.

America has profoundly changed in the twilight of Trump’s presidency and will profoundly, too, change during the upcoming Joe Biden’s presidency. Trump missed the chance of his life to prolong his time in office with the second term. Trump will continue to claim that this election is deceitful and will try to keep Americans believing that he would return in 2024. His futuristic candidacy is not at all far-fetched but could hardly happen because his current game is already over, his time as real estate guru doing politics in America is over, too.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by Ambassador Tran Duc Mau are of his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Hanoitimes.

The Hanoitimes – The Biden/Harris pair inherits from Trump a deeply divided, confused and unstable America in both the politics and the society.

More than two weeks after the US presidential election on November 3, although Ameri-can media already trumpeted Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden as the winner with 306 out of 538 electoral votes, US President Donald Trump keeps refusing to concede. His legal fight against the election results would become more hopeless with each passing day. Trump’s time as US president is drawing to a close.

US President Donald Trump makes a fist as he walks after speaking in a campaign rally at Laughlin/Bullhead International Airport in Bullhead City, Arizona, U.S., October 28, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

But surely, he won’t both physically and ideologically disappear from US politics in Biden’s hypothetical first presidency and beyond. He will surely become Biden’s main po-litical opponent. He personally or one of his men or women will rival Biden or for someone else from the Democratic Party in the next US presidential election in 2024. That is why Trump is now trying at much as he could to preserve and build up his legacy from his now ending four-year-walk from business-making into politic-enjoying. And his legacy will certainly create uncountable hurdles and challenges for Biden and his female running mate Kamala Harris.

The Biden/Harris pair inherits from Trump a deeply divided, confused and unstable America in both the politics and the society. It will be very hard and burdensome for Biden/Harris to succeed in securing bipartisan cooperation in politics and to reconciliate Trump’s supporters and Biden’s backers. If Biden/Harris are unable to mend this double division during their term in office, they then would hardly maintain the Democratic Party in the presidency longer. Only through uniting the country, both politically and socially, they could prevent Trump and his allies from again dominating the US politics and society.

During his presidency, Trump has pursued policies which have profoundly changed the US and its relations with the world. Biden has pledged to reverse many of Trump’s politi-cal directions but it is obviously much easier to say than to do. Trump has already made many things “fait accompli” so that Biden needs much time and harder work to revoke them if they were still yet to be revoked. Trump apparently strives to force Biden to deal primarily with his legacy rather than to govern the US in the next 4 years.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by Ambassador Tran Duc Mau are of his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Hanoitimes.

Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi preside over a Joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol earlier in the day on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. Members of Congress returned to the House Chamber after being evacuated when protesters stormed the Capitol and disrupted a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.(Erin Schaff / POOL / AFP)

An unusually tame Trump, in a video he released on Twitter after a temporary suspension, condemned rioters who rampaged in his name through a congressional session that certified Biden’s victory, although he did not go so far as to congratulate or even say the name of his successor.

“This moment calls for healing and reconciliation,” said Trump, in a jarring shift of tone a day after a grievance-fueled outdoor rally in which he encouraged thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol.

“We have just been through an intense election and emotions are high, but now tempers must be cooled and calm restored,” said Trump, standing before a lectern with the presidential seal.

“A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power,” he said.

“Serving as your president has been the honor of my lifetime,” Trump said, without explicitly conceding and insisting he was “fighting to defend American democracy.”

Trump’s turnaround came as aides including one cabinet member resigned and the two top Democrats in Congress urged his immediate removal, fearing the damage he can still inflict in his less than two weeks left in the world’s most powerful job.

Biden, who won seven million votes more than Trump in the November 3 election as well as a decisive edge in the vital state-by-state Electoral College, declined to address demands for Trump’s removal but accused him of an “all-out assault on the institutions of our democracy.”

“Yesterday, in my view, was one of the darkest days in the history of our nation,” Biden said at an event to introduce his nominee for attorney general, respected judge Merrick Garland, who if confirmed will quickly need to decide whether to prosecute Trump.

“They weren’t protesters,” Biden said. “They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists.”

“I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming but that isn’t true,” Biden said. “We could see it coming.”

“The past four years, we’ve had a president who’s made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law clear in everything he has done,” he said.

– Calls to remove Trump –

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer urged Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows a majority of the cabinet to remove a president deemed unable to discharge his duties.

They threatened otherwise to impeach Trump for an unprecedented second time in hopes that the Senate, where Democrats are projected to have won control after runoff elections Tuesday in Georgia, will now oust him.

“This is an emergency of the highest magnitude,” Pelosi said, describing Trump as a “very dangerous person.”

“By inciting sedition, as he did yesterday, he must be removed from office,” she said. “While it’s only 13 days left, any day can be a horror show for America.

Few Republicans came forward to back such remedies although Representative Adam Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic within his party, said it was time to “end this nightmare” and also called for invoking the 25th Amendment, which has been used previously when presidents undergo a surgical procedure.

“The president is unfit,” Kinzinger said. “And the president is unwell.”

Invoking the amendment would make Pence the acting president for the remaining two weeks the administration has in office.

Speaking to CNN, retired Marine Corps general John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months, said the cabinet should consider the 25th Amendment but believed the president had been chastened.

“He can give all the orders he wants but no one is going to break the law,” Kelly said.

Pence, loyally by Trump’s side until the final days, rejected Trump’s vocal pressure to somehow intervene in Tuesday’s session, which has taken place every four years for more than two centuries without drama.

In the middle of the night, after hours of delay due to the riots and Trump loyalists’ contesting of the results, it was Pence who formally announced the victory of Biden as the 46th president and Kamala Harris as the next vice president.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and is one of Trump’s longest-serving cabinet members, announced she would resign over the “entirely avoidable” violence at the Capitol.

Thursday evening Education Secretary Betsy DeVos became the second cabinet member to quit, telling Trump in a letter that such “behavior was unconscionable for our country.”

Others who resigned included Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump chief of staff who is now US special envoy to Northern Ireland, and the deputy national advisor, Matt Pottinger, an architect of Trump’s hawkish line on China.

– Scrutiny on security –

During the mayhem in Congress, security forces fired tear gas to drive out the flag-waving crowds and police said a woman, reportedly a Trump supporter from California, was shot by police and killed. Three other deaths were reported on the Capitol grounds but the circumstances remained unclear.

Bipartisan anger was brewing over the failure of law enforcement to prevent the mobs from entering Congress.

Steven Sund, the chief of the 2,300-strong Capitol Police, handed in his resignation and lawmakers vowed a thorough investigation on security lapses.

Many questioned how police would have responded had the crowd been not overwhelmingly white Trump supporters but Black anti-racism protesters, who were met with force in nationwide demonstrations last year.

“True progress will be possible only once we acknowledge that this disconnect exists and take steps to repair it,” said former first lady Michelle Obama.

“And that also means coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy to the ground for his own ego.”