HANOI - The United States and Vietnam announced new deals and partnerships as U.S. President Joe Biden visited Hanoi on Sunday including billions of dollars in plane orders, heightened human rights discussions, digital economy education and semiconductor design centers.Vietnam Airlines has agreed to buy about 50 Boeing 737 Max jets in a deal valued at about $7.5 billion. The deal will support"over 33,000 direct and indirect jobs" in the U.S., the White House said in a statement.
The United States and the United Nations recently criticized Vietnam's detention of members of an environmental group as part of a wider trend of Vietnamese authorities targeting free speech.The U.S. is helping to"build Vietnamese capacity to fight regional and international transnational crime," the White House said, including"illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing."
China and Vietnam have a long-simmering dispute about fishing and other rights in the South China Sea; Beijing claims the waters almost entirely, ignoring other nations' exclusive economic zones.The U.S. will expand its efforts to address lingering damage from the Vietnam war, which ended in 1975, including increasing funding from $183 million to $300 million for a dioxin remediation project in the Bien Hoa Air Base area.The U.S.