 Good afternoon. I'm Ernie Bauer, the senior advisor and director of the Southeast Asia program here at CSIS and we're very fortunate this afternoon to have the US ambassador to Vietnam David Shear with us. Welcome, David. Thank you very much, Ernie. Could you tell us a little bit about the status of US-Vietnam relations? We've normalized the relationship and now it seems to be going in some new directions. Overall, where are we headed? US-Vietnam relations have grown tremendously since we normalized relations in 1995. Last year, the two countries did $22 billion in two-way trade. That represented a 20% increase over 2010 trade. So the the relationship has great potential in the economic sphere. We also have great potential in diplomatic cooperation and people-to-people relations as well. We have 15,000 Vietnamese students studying in the United States now and they'll make tremendous ambassadors when they return to their home country. Absolutely. Vietnam is one of the nine countries, along with the United States negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement. Could you tell us a little bit about the state of the negotiations and how Vietnam views it? Vietnam and the United States concluded a bilateral trade agreement 10 years ago. And when we concluded that agreement, two-way trade stood at about $400 million dollars. And as I mentioned earlier, two-way trade last year was $22 billion dollars. So both sides have benefited tremendously from the opening trade relationship we've established since the early 2000s. And we hope that with the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, our economic relationship will move to the next level. And Vietnam has a great deal to benefit from further opening trade with the United States, as do we. You, on the trade side, we're making progress. What about on the strategic side? I think the United States and Vietnam are talking about a strategic partnership. What does that look like and what are the aspects of it? Vietnam and the United States have a strong common interest in continued peace and stability in Southeast Asia in general and in the South China Sea in particular. And we have worked together very closely to ensure that regional security issues remain very much on the multilateral agenda in regional diplomacy. And I expect that we will continue to cooperate very closely to pursue this common interest in the future. Congress, US Congress, has expressed concerns about the human rights and religious freedom issues in Vietnam. Can you give us an update on what's going on in those areas? Well, the Vietnam has a ways to go in order to improve their human rights record, as our annual Human Rights Report suggests. The Vietnamese, we hope, will do what will work hard to release political prisoners to increase the opportunities for freedom of expression and freedom of association. And we also look for improvements in religious freedom as well. The Vietnamese are also working on trafficking in persons. We've seen some improvements there. They have recently passed a anti-trafficking law and we expect to work very closely with the Vietnamese as they implement that law. Just a follow-up on that. The military-to-military relationship, obviously, you know, we've fought a war together against each other, but we are now talking about normalizing mill-to-mill relations. Could you give us a little look into that process? Military-to-military ties between our two countries took a big step forward last September when we concluded a memorandum of understanding on military cooperation. And on the basis of that MOU, we're going to explore further cooperation in such areas as peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief, as well as military-to-military exchanges among our military training institutions. So I think we have a great deal of potential in this area and I would look to see us implementing that MOU over the next year or so. It's great. People-to-people ties, education. The United States just made a major donation on the education side for scholarships. Where are we on education and ties between our countries? Education represents a great export for the United States to Vietnam and it's got great future potential. As I mentioned earlier, we've got 15,000 Vietnamese students in the United States at in many different kinds of institutions of higher education. There's really a university or a college or a community college here for every Vietnamese requirement and we're encouraging even more Vietnamese to study in the United States. At the same time, we're very interested in helping the Vietnamese improve their own educational infrastructure and we're implementing a variety of programs in Vietnam to help them do that. Well, Ambassador Shearer, thank you for joining us today. We certainly are well represented and annoyed with you there. Thank you for coming.