we need to debate or at least get out on the record is what i view as a recent push by some policymakers in washington certainly within some constituent members of the fsoc if not the fsoc itself is to attempt to vilify in this context electronic trading specifically as the cause of the lack of liquidity, which to me is turning the world on its head. i listened to dr. harris and i'm intryinged by his notions when i've been following for while, maybe a thousand chutes will grow from the chaos of all these rules that have decreased liquidity. maybe it will be a hedge fund or maybe it will be a broker dealer that trades fixed income. but employing new technology, new business models, electronic trading is happening in the aftermath of all of these other changes yet being pointed at, blamed for this lack of

liquidity. and we can't let this narrative go unchallenged. you've seen it in the fsoc annual report. there was a drive by of it in the multi agency report that came out last october. and i've been around this town long enough there always has to be a boogeyman somewhere when you're trying to misdirect. i think this is an area that we need to encourage and not run away from and not vilify, not accept the standard pushback that we're getting. and the second point, too which is this notion of the aggregate impact of regulation. and your question, which i think is a good one, how much of it is standard post crisis and how much of it is regulation. i was listening closely to sandy. i think we've reached a point where we've seen historically

2008 to maybe into '11 where there was a lot of prudent risk management undertaken in response to a crisis. i don't think you can parse them out any longer. you can't say it's basul, it's dodd frank, you go down the road and then it's prudent risk management because what risk is there to manage when you've been told to derisk everything? so there is this burning need, i think, and i know dr. langston hash doing some work, i know the new york fed has been looking at this. but it goes back to your introductory remarks which i think you politely didn't call out jamie dimon for asking that question of ben bernanke and he was the one that did it. it inspired me to look at this exchange where he said no one is looking at the aggregate impact.

i've identified after committing my own staff resources, 300 or so regulations that apply to a hypothetical u.s. financial services holding company since dodd frank. not only related to dodd frank, some international measures too, but since. and if you look at this chart, it just reeks you know, impossibility. how do you do it? if you're not too big to fail how do you pay for the compliance costs? how do you provide liquidity in a situation where you have all of these rules and if you're lucky, the cost benefit has been analyzed rule by rule. it's something we policymakers have to look into. >> can i quickly say something about the hft question. the hft has a really bad name and they're not the boogeyman in the room if you will. in fact i think the report that was just released today will show that the hfts provided

liquidity during the window when there was increased volatility. but i do think the report does say we need to look at the issue a lot more closely in terms of that trading strategy and whether it creates unintended consequences. i just want to put that out there. >> so i appreciate going back to, you know, not just regulations being a factor for changes in market liquidity. there really are a number of factors. they deal in risk management and coming back to electronic trading. i don't think -- and i'm not going to speak for fsoc. i can only speak for myself through the fed on electronic trading. it's not viewed as a -- not meant to be vilified i don't think so. i think it is an unknown. it's very new. and there's not as much information about it to market participants or to regulators

about it as much as perhaps, and i think the inner agency study, staff study on october 15th was actually a nice step forward. on this issue. it doesn't try to identify a cause, a single -- i mean it certainly was looking for whether there is an error or something. it does not find an error. and so it took a step of, let's provide as much information to the public about what happened during that window. and there's an enormous amount of information in that report that i think people will now be able to look and evaluate and each individual participant may be a little part of that whole piece and by seeing it altogether they may learn something more about it. but i think it was quite careful to not vilify. but a couple of interesting things is it is a very big part of the treasury market. and an even bigger part of the treasury futures market.

are all investors and market participants and banks and ccps, are they managing this risk add a adequately. so it may be adding liquidity. they're probably all unique firms just like banks are. but when markets are transactioning at milliseconds within it's important that we look at the questions around that. so i think that is one of the key take aways from the study. >> recently, federal reserve governor jerome powell said there's no doubt that liquidity has been reduced in certainly markets, but he also indicated he was not too worried that a decreased market liquidity would cause big problems when the fed starts lifting interest rates saying i'm not particularly concerned that a return to

higher volatility will leave much of a market on the u.s. economy. what's your response to that? >> a return to higher rate? i don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon. we've heard them talking about it for a while. but if there is an exit by, you know, the music fund group, the insurance group, the foreign investors, the three investor groups that have issued the majority of the corporate debt that has been issued over the last decade, if they all decide to exit at one time, which we all flow we're going to see a dramatic drop in prices. i'd rather go back and talk about a minute about electronic trading, if i might. talking about their global issues and how they've seen the size of the orders for global issues go down. i saw a presentation by will rose of the rhodes group about a year and a half, two years ago, and it was specific to specific trading. he likened it back to how we saw

the number of transactions and equities go up and the size of the transaction go down. and he put a graph up of what was going on with global issues in the fixed income world. and we saw the same thing happening. the volume of transactions was going up dramatically and the size of the transactions was goc down. and when you talk about electronic trading in the treasury market, you know i suppose the high frequency traders can take place. we don't trade in the treasury market. when you get off into the corporate world, there's a number of global issues that could be traded in that fashion but the majority of the those in the fixed income world are so limited in scope to their size that you can't have a high volume of transactions. if you're on a particular platform and there's a million bonds being offered at a particular price and you lift a million bonds, that's what you get. you can't go out and do $100 million worth of that bond because there's only a million bonds there. so i think the adoption of electronic trading over the last

number of years has been tremendous. i think it lends itself well to the treasury market and global issues. but when you start to get off the majority of the fixed income market, it works but the fear of high frequently trading on that type of security which is the majority of the market just doesn't exist. >> >> just to add, we've been spending a lot of time talking about liquidity as we perceive it today. more importantly, we need to look at what our expectations are for market depth and the demand for liquidity in the future. and i think we look towards the horizon it's probably important to know and not pick on regulations and i agree completely there are lots of other factors. in our control is about 40% of the rule writing is still yet to happen. it will further decrease the level of market liquidity.

and i would ask that is it the opportunity right now to take a pause from the base that we are at higher capital, higher liquidity, reinforcing testing, higher standards broadly to determine dmrts condition text of what i mentioned earlier. the balance of safety and soundless in the balancing of functioning markets. our goal collectively should be the resiliency of the u.s. financial economy and it's comprised of those two items. so i think here might be the opportunities, again, not about rolling back what has occurred not about being concerned because i agree with governor powell to the extent that we have a marketplace and i believe markets are resilient. they will eevolve, there's no doubt. but we see further market decline and we are at the precipice of the potential for changing monetary policy and the unwind of quantitative easing

which will very likely present an skresed demand for that same liquidity. >> that is really great. that kind of queues up the last segment of our time together. the last segment was designed as we talked to the panelist, about the road forward for ensuring that we do have market liquidity. and if there are -- if we say some space is shrinking, then where is the space that we can increase and embracing technology and embracing some of these ideas because one of the things particularly from my perspective is the last thing you want to do is let congress stick its foot in. who needs to fix liquidity is

the marketplace and we need a robust marketplace and we need a marketplace that has some space to be innovative. and if we tend to try to fix the activities of the marketplace, so what are some of the ideas that people have out there in -- >> let me go to you. >> sure. when we look at the market and think about ways to improve the liquidity situation from the status quo i touched on some of them. one of our set of ideas falls under the broad category of modernizing the market structure. what we mean by that more specifically is in fixed income the evolution in certain products were appropriate. the more fixed income products,

the treasuries and large investment corporate bond we believe those could very suitably be traded on platforms and exchanges over time rather than the over-the-counter contegs. what that means is the finite balance sheet capacity that there is would then be freed up for less liquid products that are never going to be suitable for exchange trading. secondly we believe that a construct called open trading or ultra all trading where rather than looking for bilateral connections between firms and broker/dealers, you have a broader pool where those connections can be made and essentially increase the network. we'll uncover some latent liquidity, some latent buying and selling demand. in addition, we think those previous two steps are logistically and practically

only scalable in an electronic trading context. so already we've seen in the u.s. credit markets over the past decade go from zero percent to about 15% to 20% market share right now. and we do think there is ram for significant growth. to state, electronic trading has been an efficiency and productivity tool. it hasn't change the infrastructure of the market. we do think that electronic trading and the adoption of new hybrid trading protocols can actually help to uncover liquidity that's not currently being tapped. and all of these have in common that collectively they would reduce the capital intensity of the market making business. one of the constraints to new strands in the market is that it's a capital intensive business to buy and hold balance sheets waiting for the other

side of the trade. by making it more information intensive rather than capital intensive, we do think that will allow new providers to emerge and just make it a more heterogeneous market. as a large user of liquidity and a large customer of broker dealers, it's in our interest, obviously, to have a broader network of providers. so we think that helps posture that growth. >> does that shift the risk then to the broker dealer? >> one of the comments made earlier is that in a way, one of the impacts of regulation has been to shift investment risk from the leverage bank ss whether that's an intended or unintended consequence, i think that could bear some of the more transaction risks. moving from a principal to an

agency market would de facto occur in changes over time. exchanges collect, buy, orders and sellers and match them together. they will work and they already do work in treasuries and they

work in many equities not all. but they're not going to work in some of the bonds that these panelists have talked about where they really only trade by appointment. but that said, there's still room for electronic markets or electronic facility toes help the trading of those bonds. so in particular the development of an order displaced facility a facility that would allow people to say i have this bond, i'd like to say it and here is the price at which i'd like to sell this bond. we already sort of have systems like this, but the problem is people regularly trade through those prices. by trade through, i mean if the market is offered in one of these systems, said 101, people would be arranging a trade at 102. so the buyer would have preferred the 102 price. that's not necessarily an evil thing.

it's possible the broebler didn't even know about the 101 price. and finally, we have to make sure that people don't violate their agency obligations to their clients and trade through when they do know about these prices. so just to give you an interesting statistic, inter active brokers gave me a lot of data. they collect the bit bids and offers. some of them are firm, some of them are just indications of the prices at which people have indicated they're willing to trade at all sorts of different venues. and they combine it into a single series. and i ask the question given the report of all trades that took place in the i'd during the time i had this data, how much do we see trade throughs? and the trade through rate was 21%. there was a buyer or a seller who could have done better

presumably if they could have accessed the prices. if they could have accessed the prices, maybe they wouldn't have been there but still, this shows the incredible potential. what's needed is an order displaced facility. it doesn't have to be mandated by the government, bit has to be something where private entities can create these things where the price res made public, not necessarily through a consolidated system. but if not reuters or others will consolidate the information just as incident either active does. but most importantly, a system where you're not allowed to trade through those prices because you're not doing your client a service by failing to pick up the easy to pick up trade. there is one additional complicate. if you say you can't trade through that price, you must make that price available so it can be taken. but if anybody can take a price, then it has to be the case that the trading system has to be an all to all system where if i

grab it i can settle the trade. we do this all the time in equities. why should it be so difficult to do it in another system. they're just securities. so let's settle them up that way. these are the order handling rules that i referred to before that made equity trading so incredibly effective. it won't be the same in bond markets because there are so many bonds. but to the extent that it makes the bond markets better, it will make the -- somebody else better off. and so the total value of those 48% that traded through -- oh, i had it here somebody else. the difference between the trade price ta they received and that they might have received times the -- not the full size of their trade, but only the displayed size that total value

adds up to $600 million,ed 700 million per year and that's just on the limited daddy that i had available to me. so there is huge potential for change here. if we save that money for investors, how much more willing will they be to buy ge securities or investors. >> if you had had access to platforms like that, would that have been a benefit to ge? >> well, i think the platforms are -- first of all, i think there is a role for electronics platforms, absolutely. i think i think the key to it is -- and dr. harris touched on it. how do you make it so most buyers and sellers use the

platform as the means of choice for buying or selling securities? and if that were the case, and to the extent it removes the inefficiency and truly security transactions are transed at the best levels then, you know i think for an issuer, it does start to set a true secondary market level that potentially is tighter than what might have been and then that new issue premium is probably a tighter one than people would ask for when they're trying to build a buffer in as occurs nowadays. and i think the key question is how do you encourage people to make use of this so that the majority of transactions do occur on certain selected platforms because then people have access to that information. i mean, in some ways, we're talking about information

transparency because a logical buyer would not allow a price done at a worser level if they knew the better level potentially existed. but because they don't have that information, they just think they're getting the best price and they do it. and i think that's a very big question. how do you ensure that it becomes the systems of choice or the platforms of choice and that there is this free flow of information that hits you know, 80%, 90% of the players in this market. >> our regulators, how do we -- i think transparency is definitely key in our slots and futures market. we were mandated under dodd frank to have such a trading platform. and i think with that, the markets will be transparent and why wouldn't necessarily say we'll work for the income market

given the number of bonds that are there. i do think some of the suggestions that were put out in terms of mandating the more liquid benchmarks for the securities. saying it's a good idea. and i think for the most part, if we continue to share data with the regulators, i think that will create an incentive for the market to come up and be more creative, as well. >> so moving from big to small, it occurs to me this whole conversation -- believe to me it's occurred to me before, but we were and having talking about systemic risk. i think dr. lang was talking about it in that context. sandy was, too. and kind of interesting that of all the things dodd frank did, it created a financial stability

oversight council to find and address pending systemic risks and here is one we're having a big conference about and talking about and it's been written about for years and not real obvious action being taken. i guess they're busy designating insurance companies. so i think we should expect and demand more out of any council given the type of power that fsoc has been given to this issue. they have, of course access to the ofr, you know, a supposedly independent group with some really smart folks who are supposed to do this kind of research. they can research these issues and get the data. larry can help them if they need it and they can report up to fsoc and it would be nice to know more of that is going on. maybe it is. i'm famously not a member and every now and again i read in the journal what happens.

or bloomberg or whatever. so i just think not enough is happening on these issues, the actually liquidity crisis itself and looking at the aggregate impact of regulation and its role of the liquidity. both of those should and could be happening at ofr. moving down the scale, then, within the fixed income markets that we oversee, because we have authority there, i view it as kind of two main issues. market structure bigger picture and microstructure issues like dr. harris was getting at. but they're so intwined that you have to look at both at the same time. we still have, as i said earlier, markets that look like they did in 1950 guys named vinnie and joey are still trading tens of billions of dollars on the phone and it's very opaque. before, you would have no idea what the prices are and those price res post trade.

and we, as an agency, we as i think a government need to decide, is that the right market structure? and if not, the worst possible thing, as we've all said, would be for congress to come in and do a title seven on that market and say all of a sudden, let's have central clearing and staff exchange like trading. it sounds great, it's an equity market like or a future market like construct. it was laid over with derivatives, a formerly otc market and it hasn't gone all that great. we'll see how it turns out 10 to 20 years from now. so i think that's a huge issue and one we need to wrestle with. but at the same time, we recognize the retail participation in these markets. it's 75% rev tail given the tax advantage that makes sense. in corporate, it's getting close to 50%. and half of that 50% through

aets managers is half direct. it's certainly close to dunl double digits if not 11. that's a huge number and a huge notional and if we can bring, as commissioner bowen said, more transparencies, if investors un, a, what they've just paid to do a trade, whether it's a buy or sell, if they understand what the prevailing prices are before they do the trade as opposed to after, and if they get the pricing and information that i think is being inflicted upon them today, they might go get those pitch forks and, sorry dan, go after their dealers and demand a change in market structure that provides more efficiency. and i think dr. harris's idea which if you didn't see it he ran in the "wall street journal" a couple of moss ago is hugely important. one that i admittedly hadn't thought about. but i'm not a ph.d. economist. this notion of handling is an apt one.

you can get major market changes coming from the grassroots. if you provide this more transparency at the retail level, you might get more liquidity and other changes and i hope and expect that we can do that. so i think the commission is actually -- you know as joking as i've been i think on this front of retail transparency pushing the sros to do more. i still think it's not enough. i think the commission should change its own rules on confirmations to show customers how much they've paid on a trade. i think that would change a lot. and then on the larger fixed income issues, that's why i think we need to commit our staffing resources, start thinking bigger picture and entertain at the ideas from the industry that hopefully don't require being rules but that can make big shifts. we've done a lot of talking about it, but it's time to really put it in motion. >> you brought of an interesting point about fsoc and their role of being the coordinating entity. and this is a very important

subject. is this dialogue going on within fsoc to your knowledge? >> my interesting isn't really great with respect to fsoc because they don't tell us much. and i read the annual report and in the annual report this is something they're looking at. i think it was on about page 117 and it talk ss real quickly about the context. so i don't know. i hope more citizens of this country when they sit back and hope that we in washington are doing things that i know we're not, i hope that they're doing this as opposed to spending all their time figuring out whether to make institutions that should be able to fail too big to fail and designating them. i hope they're going to commit to that. but i honestly, chairman don't know.

>> this report that's a joint one is any indication in terms of how our agencies can work together then i'm pretty excited about what they will do for us. >> so there is something in the annual report. that is something that the principals of the council have discussed. and, again this report is an interagency effort which is -- the cftc and the fed and the treasury, it is not simple -- i think what the fsoc try toes build on is the expertise of each of the agencies. this report requires the expertise that the federal reserve system can bring to it and understanding treasury market transactions or the cftc can bring to it in the futures market. the data are immense. transactions are being done in milliseconds. it doesn't take very much days

before you get into billions and billions of transactions and identifying parts. i think it's a pretty good example of some ways this council can be effective. >> and just one related point, not that you don't have enough to do, mr. chairman, but in this context, i'm not going to disagree. i think the report is good quality staff work and you do know, of course, ta given the exceptions and the law, there is no regulatory authority in the treasury markets by either the fed, the cftc or the sec and quite honestly, i think that's something congress should look at. >> our time is drawing near and we still have so many questions left. is there anybody that wants to make a comment of something that you thought we would talk about but we didn't get a chance to talk about and dr. harris?

>> sure. very very briefly when the trace data first became publicly available, mike piebar now a commissioner of the exchange of the s.e.c. and i and another woman named amy add ward did a tudy of transaction costs and bonds. and that study showed something that very few people have appreciated. and it's a shame that they don't. it shows that an issuer who has lots and lots of issues that are very complicate that those issues trade in less liquid markets than the issuers who have few issues outstanding and issues that are very simple. and so we should somehow try to figure out how to great the issuers, which they are municipal issuers or whether they are corporations to issue

fewer bonds. they can reissue existing bonds. the states can form municipal bond banks. so the mosquito -- distinct doesn't know anything about it. if we could just beat down the number of names these markets would operate more effectively. they'll be liquid again and it's according to the demand. one other very quick comment, mr. leland said something that really bothered me. which is that he -- there is a story that you had about holding

a bond that you would be forced to divest of because the period in which you had to hold it would be too long. >> right. >> so that is really a concern. unless there is a really good reason for a regulation like that, he's at a disadvantage to his competitors. and i really hate to say unbalanced playing fields. we really need to sur vale va all our regulations and make sure there's good reasons for it. where reasons like that aren't present or they're reasons that date from times past it's not fair that his firm shouldn't be able to adapt to a changing world and that he ends up losing his business to people who, you know, hedge funds or otherwise that aren't similarly regulated not because they aren't regulated, but simply there's no reason for it.

>> well, there has been a great discussion. this is a discussion i think it's not just a one-time event, but it's something that should be ongoing. i'm hopeful that more of this kind of dialogue will go on. i want to ask our audience to show the appreciation for the thoughtful presentation. and i personally appreciate all of you participating in this. i know that these are very busy people and i've found this to be very simulating. with that, we are adjourned. >> on the next washington journal, the latest developments in the iran nuclear negotiations and an update on how the house

select committee benghazi plans to proceed with its investigation. we'll hear from a couple of members of congress. first, representative jan sakowski of illinois and later, republican congressman mike pompeo of kansas is a member of the select intelligence and select benghazi committees. washington journal live every morning at 7:00 a.m. on c-span. you can contribute to the program by phone and on facebook and on twitter. >> the house foreign affairs subcommittee on europe holds a hearing tuesday on the future of the european union and the u.s. relationship with eu members. live coverage starts at 2:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span3. book tv is television for serious readers. and join us this saturday starting at 11:00 a.m. eastern for our all day live coverage of

the harlem book fair the nation's flagship literary events with author talks and discussions with historians and on sunday, august 2nd author and code pink cofounder ma dee ya benjamin. saturday, we've live from our nation's capital for the national book festival celebrating its 15th year following sunday with former second later and senior fellow at the mern enterprise institute, lynn cheney. that will be on c-span2's book tv. next a look at u.s. vietnam relations 40 years since the end of the vietnam war. the vietnamese general secretary spoke at the center for strategic and international studies. this is an hour.

please be seated. your excellentsy mr. general secretary, am bass doers bing and osesus, act bass doors from the asean excellence committee ladies and gentlemen, welcome to cis on this historic occasion of the visit ever visit by a secretary general of the communist party of vietnam to washington, d.c. and the white house. i think all of you mate know, but just in case you haven't heard, yesterday the president of the united states president

obama, met with the general secretary in the oval office and that meeting went well over time which is a good sign for all of us who were watching the event. er part of history being made today. my name is ernie becauser, chair here at csis. it is my distinct honor to welcome you to csis for the bannon tree leadership form featuring his excellency, win fu chong for an important policy key note speech entitled u.s. vietnam relations in the changing world. i'd also like to thank ambassador ambassadors who played leading roles in making this historic visit a reality. thank you, too, to ambassador carla hills who has graciously

agreed to introduce the general secretary in her role as a leading member of the csis board of trustee necessary just a minute. but before i invite ambassador hills to make her remarks a couple of housekeeping announcements. i invite you all to live tweet today's speerch. and in the unlikely event of an emergency, i will act as your security center today. if we need the evacuate, the exists are behind you. please use the stairs, remain calm and meet in front of the billion across the street and please follow instructions from csis staff. now it is my pleasure to introduce a good friend of csis and a good friend of mine ambassador carla hill. carla played a vital role in making the united states

competitor most importantly in the george h.w. bush administration. she's served in other cabinet positions and her accomplishments in the legal and corporate sector res legendary but too pneumonia res for me to recount here. so i'd like to thank her in particular for her role today in this historic event introducing secretary chong. carla. >> thank you ernie. that was very gracious of you. let me say to all of you that it's a great honor to introduce the honorable win fu chon who serves as the general secretary of the communist party of vietnam and the secretary of the

central military commission vietnam's two most powerful policy positions. the general secretary trong was born in hanoi, studied literature at vietnam university and obtained a graduate degree from the ho chi minh national academy of political and public administration. early on he began to work for the communist review. the theoretical and political organ of the communist party. the vietnamese central committee. in 1981, he went to the soviet union to study at the uss rr academy of social services where he received a doctorate degree in political science. he returned to hanoi to resume his work for the communist

review where he rose to be editor in chief. he is regarded to be vietnam's most prominent political theorists. general secretary trong has been a member of the communist party central committee since the early '90s and over the years he's served in a number of prominent government positions, including the secretary of hanoi city's party committee, making him the de facto head of the city authority. member of the polit bureau of the communist party in charge of idea lonely idealogical, cultural and educational affairs of the party central committee, chairman of the central committee's theoretical council in charge of the parties, theoretical work. chairman of the national assembly. and since 2011, and currently,

is general secretary of the communist party of vietnam's central committee and secretary of the central military commission of the communist party. your excellency, we are incredibly honored to have you at csis and look forward to your remarks, so please join me in welcoming the general secretary to speak at this podium. [ speaking foreign language ]. >> translator: good afternoon, everyone. it is my great pleasure to be with you here today on the

occasion of my official visit to the united states and i would like to thank the center for strategic international studies for inveeting me to address this meeting. csis is one of the preeminent institutions for research and economic change in the united states and it plays a critical role in promoting exchange and dialogue among schoolers and people on issues of significant importance to international peace, security and development. my compliments to your outstanding achievements and thank you all for your presence. my visit to the united states comes at a time when we are celebrating 20 years of diplomatic relations between vietnam and the united states. this is a meaningful time for us to reflect upon the relationship

between our two countries. and to share the vision towards the future. so today, allow me to show you some of my thoughts about vietnam-u.s. relations and there were events in the history of vietnam/u.s. ties that are little known. thomas jefferson, before becoming the third president of the united states, tried to obtain -- from vietnam to grow on his farm in the state of virginia. a hundred years ago, the vietnamese -- who later became president ho chi minh during his quest for national liberation set foot in the city of boston the starting point for the revolution for independence in the united states. during world war ii vietnam and

the united states were allies on the front against -- the vietnam independent led by president ho chi minh rescued american pilots who had been shot down by troops in vietnam. i would like to tell you some details. out of the 17 american pilots rescued by vietming was a man named william shaw from the state of texas. he was met by president ho chi minh and president ho chi minh brought him to china and to hand him over to american commanders stationed there and he wrote a

slogan to call on the vietnamese people to rescue the american pilot and these were publicized on the independence newspaper. he also made poems to call to remind the vietnamese people that the u.s. army is our friend and rescuing american pilots is our good intend. the declaration of independence of the new vietnam in 1945 began with a quote from the american declaration of independence all men are created equal. they are endowed by their creator of certain inalienable rights. among these are life, libber today and the pursuit of happy ps. first of first nations that the president wished to -- ties with was the united states.

he wrote 40 letters to american leaders, including president harry truman to ask for a full cooperation with the united states. then president ho chi minh expected his desire for full cooperation with the united states, but only recently did our two country cans staep establish comprehensive partnership. however wbts regrettable that some historic opportunities were missed and we had to encounter periods full of twistes and turns in the two countries until relations in 1995. today in america, there are still different opinions about the war the i'd conducted in vietnam in the 20th century. for the vietnamese people freedom and national unification, it is not the war

against the united states nor one against the american people. even in the midst of war, the vietnamese people still maintain friendship with the american people and many americans stood up in protest of the war and expressed solidarity with the people. a remarkable example was martin luther king jr. after the end of the war, vietnam decided to put wind the past and look to the future was suffering heavily from the consequences of war, was extremely in death, 4.8 million supposed to agency orange and hundreds of thousands missing right in their homeland. the government, and people of vietnam were actively engaged in

an effective corporation with the united states in accounting for american soldiers missing in action in vietnam. today, all americans who come to vietnam, including war veterans are welcomed. and they can still -- a friendship of the vietnamese people. that may not be easy to understand for some, but that's the truth, that all those who used to come to vietnam could see firsthand. this morning i had a meeting with senator john mccain who is a chairman of the senate committee for armed services and he records -- sorry -- the visit of himself and his wife to

hanoi. and he's -- his wife, when in hanoi, asked something to take her in a motor to ride around the city of hanoi. she was so excited about the motorbike riding and she was very impressed at the sincere friendship and hospitality of the vietnamese people. having recalled history, and the persistent desire of the vietnamese people, friendship and cooperation between vietnam and the united states. regarding vietnam-soous relations over the past two decades, 20 years ago could have imagined how vietnam and the united states could overcome the pains of war to build such a robust partnership as today.

over the past 20 years, vietnam u.s. relations have gone from strength to strength all the way to important milestones from -- we have normalized relations, we have staepd diplomatic ties, we have a bilateral trade agreement in 2000 and most recently in 2013 13 we established the comprehensive partnership and bilateral relations keeps growing -- sorry bilateral cooperation in a wide range of areas has made substantial progress. economic cooperation has kept growing and the united states today is vietnam's leading trade partner. cooperation in science, technology, education and training has seen very positive steps forward.

and do you know how many vietnamese students are there in the united states? there are currently 16,500 vietnamese students studying in united states and vietnam is the number one country in southeast asia with the largest student community in the united states. bilateral trade over the past 20 years increased by 130 times from 400 million u.s. dollars in 1995 up to 36 billion u.s. dollars in 2014. cooperation in japan's and security has made steady progress with the signing of the memorandum of understanding on bilateral defense cooperation in 2011 and particularly the joint vision statement on defense relations in hanoi in june this year on the occasion of the

visit to vietnam by the u.s. secretary of vietnam and the united states also enjoy a good combination on many international and regional issues from nonproliferation counterterrorism, climb change response to maritime security, nuclear security, maintaining peace, stability and promoting cooperation in the asia pacific region. humanitarian cooperation including activities for legacy issues has been realized effect hely by both sides. it is vietnam's consistent policy to consider those missing in action during the war in vietnam a humanitarian issue. people to people ties have been increasingly expended and act to enhance understanding and

friendship between two countries. these for respect for each other's inspection sovereignty, territorial integrity political regime for mutual benefits. along the way, vietnam and its viewers have achieve common ground of these bral principals and this is an important and contributing factor to establishing trust between the two countries. the cooperation between vietnam and the united states over the past 20 years is in the right direction and brings about benefits to both people. it is beneficial for peace cooperation, stability and the asia pacific and the world. this is the result of hard work by the leaders and people of both countries in a series of

putting behind the past, overcoming differences, maximizing commonalities and looking to the future. this is also an example for the relations between two countries with different political backgrounds that used to be adversaries in the past which is conducive to the peace and cooperation of the times. i'd like to take this opportunity to thank all states men, organizations and individuals from both vietnam and the united states. with support and hard work has made significant contributions to promoting friendship and cooperation to the two countries. my special thanks to american friends who have been actively assisting vietnam to overcome the -- of war and those who stand by our side to support the national development and national defense of our country.

regarding vietnam policy -- extended relations policy, ladies and gentlemen this requires otherwise to be exposed to new ways of thinking and new ways of action. scientific and technological advances, cooperation and development trends are opening up new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation among nations. economic and financial crisis along with social and humanitarian ones post new commands for sustainable growth model for economic relationship between nations and for the international economic order. traditional and nontraditional

security challenges including among others territorial disputes, cyber security aviation and maritime security has emerged in new forms affecting international peace, stability and development and requiring new mind-sets and approaches to security. environmental and economical climate change natural disasters continue to unfold with plexty, causing new command for people's way of life and for managing human relationships with neighbor in a globalized world where interdependent is increasing both in terms of development and security. international law, mutual respect and cooperation among nation must be upheld more than ever before.