Negotiation Is Art

I only cite the signing of the bilateral trade agreement with the United States because it is a door for Vietnam to reach the WTO. The negotiation process for this agreement played an important role in opening up Vietnam’s export markets and served as a driving force for its economic development. Therefore, with the primary goal of expanding markets, including the world’s number one market the United States, Vietnamese leaders underscored the importance of negotiation process. Leaving behind the bitter past, the leaders of the two countries looked forward to a future of comprehensive cooperation. Signed in 2000, the bilateral trade agreement generated a new nuance in the two-way relations. There were a lot of interesting happenings in the course of four years’ negotiations. For example, there was no agreement as thick as the one Vietnam and the United States. The very detailed and specific document had hundreds of pages while similar ones had from five to 10 pages. This was also an interesting surprise for our negotiator mission. And, it also proved that Americans observed the laws. Immediately after the agreement was concluded, the objective of bringing Vietnamese apparels and footwear to the US market was reached thanks to tariffs reduced from 40 percent to 3 percent. This preference helped Vietnam double its footwear export turnover with the US many years later.

 

Perhaps, negotiations play a very important part in determining the success of a decision by a person, an organisation or a nation, to a farther extent. Negotiation is an art. For years, we have often called attention to negotiating processes while we forget that preparation is the most important step for negotiation, which was followed by negotiation implementation. This stage consists of three steps: Preparation, internal consensus arrangement, and negotiator delegation organisation. Remarkably, before entering into any negotiations, a company needs to determine its most preferred option when no agreement is reached. It is called the elasticity of negotiation and this is very practicable in diplomatic negotiations. This responsibility belongs to chief negotiators. They must be allowed to have a degree of elasticity in their decisions. I still cited the BTA signed with the US. We had a good project which covered what we wanted, what we had and how our partner was. The result was an increasing export turnover of Vietnamese garments and textiles in the US and a broadening presence of US investors in Vietnam like IBM and Ford.