The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George Washington arrived in Danang yesterday ​for a five-day visit, a sign that relations between U.S. and Vietnam remain on track despite uncertainties in the trade relationship.

The nuclear-powered carrier and its two escorts, the guided-missile cruiser USS Robert Smalls and the guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup, pulled into the port in central Vietnam yesterday, the U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a statement.

The ship and its commanders were greeted by Vietnam’s Naval Region 3 Command, and representatives from the ministries of National Defense and Foreign Affairs, as well as senior U.S. officials from the embassy in Hanoi.

This is the fourth visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier to Vietnam since the historic visit of the USS Carl Vinson to Danang in March 2018, the first since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1995. The USS Theodore Roosevelt then visited in March 2020, to mark the 25th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Hanoi and Washington, followed by the USS Ronald Reagan in 2023. The Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group and 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit also paid a visit to Danang, along with the USS Robert Smalls, in December of last year.

In the statement, U.S. Ambassador Jennifer Wicks was “yet another testament” to the healthy state of U.S.-Vietnam defense cooperation and closer people-to-people ties under the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that the two nations signed in 2023.

“As we mark 250 years of American independence, we are proud to celebrate this milestone alongside our friends in Vietnam,” she said.

The USS George Washington’s port call has brought more than 5,000 sailors to Danang, where they will take part in various engagements with local leaders and the wider community.

“While our ship represents the high-end capabilities of the U.S. Navy, our visit here to Vietnam supports a U.S.-Vietnam relationship that continues to grow stronger across an increasingly broad range of subjects, reflecting our shared interest in a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Capt. Nicholas DeLeo, commanding officer of the USS George Washington, said in the statement. In its own statement, Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense ​said that the visit “contributes to maintaining and developing Vietnam-U.S. relations.”

The arrival of the George Washington reflects the two nations’ steady strategic convergence over the past two decades, driven by an overlapping, though by no means identical, concern about China’s growing power.

It also suggests that relations between Hanoi and Washington remain stable and productive, despite some turbidity in the trade relationship. Last week, the Trump administration announced a new 12.5 percent tariff on Vietnam after the conclusion of an investigation that found 60 nations had breached U.S. laws against the use of forced labor. The tariff came into effect after the expiry of a previous blanket 10 percent tariff.

The new “forced labor” tariffs are a transparent attempt by President Donald Trump to rescue his protectionist trade policy after the U.S. Supreme Court in February struck down the sweeping global tariffs that his administration imposed on allies and adversaries alike last year.

The second Trump administration has subjected Vietnam to close scrutiny on this front, given its lopsided trade surplus with the U.S., which totaled $178.2 billion in 2025, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.

The continued growth of the surplus has hamstrung ongoing trade talks between the two sides, and prompted accusations in Washington that Vietnam has been used as a transshipment for Chinese goods seeking to avoid U.S. tariffs.

While Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry said that the investigation’s conclusions did not accurately reflect Vietnam’s forced labor mitigation efforts, the government last month passed a new law tightening restrictions against the import and export of goods produced with forced labor.

Vietnamese authorities also recently took the unusual step of allowing U.S. customs officials to conduct “spot checks” on Chinese-owned factories in northern Vietnam, Bloomberg reported this week. The inspectors “examined documents, raw material sources, and production processes in a bid to determine how much value was added before exporting to the U.S.,” it stated, although they did not uncover any “significant evidence of Chinese goods illicitly transiting through the country.”

The Vietnamese government is also seeking to address the long-standing U.S. concerns about intellectual property violations. After a tip-off from the U.S. government, authorities in Ho Chi Minh City recently raided a factory suspected of producing nearly 50,000 pairs of fake Nike shoes.