Funded by Global Affairs Canada, the Expert Deployment Mechanism for Trade and Development (EDM) provides technical assistance to Official Development Assistance (ODA)-eligible countries to maximize the development impacts of trade and investment. Over seven years (2018-2025), EDM will invest CAD 16.5 million to support Canada’s developing country trading partners to negotiate, implement, benefit from, and adapt to trade and investment agreements with Canada.
EDM is a demand-driven project that will benefit potential partners – including governments, local private sector groups and local civil society organizations – through capacity building and technical advisory support on policy reform issues that have a high potential to reduce poverty and gender inequalities and support progress in trade and investment agreement negotiations.
Viet Nam’s development over the past three decades has been remarkable. Through sustained economic reform efforts, Viet Nam has increased per capita GDP tenfold; risen from one of the poorest nations in the world to Lower Middle-Income Country status; lifted tens of millions out of poverty; cut infant mortality in half; and increased life expectancy by almost 7 years.
An important part of its development strategy has been to integrate the global economy, including through membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the Russian-led Customs Union, bilateral trade agreements with the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Global Affairs Canada has identified Viet Nam as a priority beneficiary of EDM technical assistance in implementing the CPTPP. Since its launch in 2019, EDM has provided support for multiple activities designed to: introduce new legislation, regulations, policies, and procedures to conform to the obligations of the CPTPP; to raise public awareness of the obligations and opportunities created by the Agreement, and to strengthen trade policy capacity. Viet Nam is also engaged in ongoing FTA negotiations with Canada through its membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Viet Nam’s ambitious trade negotiation agenda is handicapped by the limited number of experienced negotiators available to conduct FTA negotiations. Vietnamese negotiating teams are generally smaller than those of its major trading partners, and, as a result, negotiators are burdened by the responsibility for multiple chapters and FTAs at the same time. Vietnamese trade negotiators often have less experience and detailed technical knowledge of negotiating issues than their negotiating partners. Both factors can contribute to delays in the negotiating process and slow Viet Nam’s integration into the global economy.
To help strengthen and expand the cadre of Vietnamese trade negotiators, the Foreign Trade University of Viet Nam has requested technical assistance to design a training course on trade negotiation skills for government officials engaged in trade negotiations and students preparing for careers in trade policy.
Without limiting the issues included in the curriculum proposed by technical experts, the course content should include: the standard protocols and procedures in international trade negotiations; standard negotiation theory; the development of trade negotiation objectives and strategies; the conduct of inclusive public consultations; the management of communications; the application of intersectional gender-based analysis to the negotiating strategy; methodologies to assess the impact of the resulting Agreement on women, ethnic minorities, and other marginalized groups; methodologies to assess the potential environmental impact of the resulting Agreement: the drafting of legal text; negotiating strategies and tactics; the preferred negotiating approach of Viet Nam’s major trading partners; trends in the scope and legal structure of modern trade agreements, including gender equality and social inclusion provisions; and the implementation of trade agreements, including best practices in promoting the utilization of trade agreements.
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