Trump’s tariffs will pummel Vietnam

ACROSS THE globe, the tariffs imposed or threatened by President Donald Trump have shaken markets and economies. But one country is particularly exposed. From April 9th Vietnam is scheduled to be on the receiving end of a 46% “reciprocal” tariff, in retaliation for its $123bn trade surplus in goods with America last year. Many in Hanoi had reckoned that tariffs were coming, but the scale of Mr Trump’s punishment has come as a shock. The Ho Chi Minh stock index fell by 7% after the announcement, the biggest daily drop in over two decades. Trading volume reached a record high.

The tariffs will hack at the root of Vietnam’s export-oriented economic model. In recent years its economy has benefited from manufacturers diversifying away from China, growing by an average of 7% a year over the past decade (excluding the pandemic). Sales to America make up 30% of its total exports and 27% of its nominal GDP. Rising real wages in China have pushed firms towards Vietnam, where labour costs are less than half the Chinese average and the population has good basic health and education.

Additionally, some firms have pursued a “China-plus-one” strategy, in which they build more supply-chain nodes outside China. For these companies, Vietnam’s good rail links with China and the fact that it is reasonably easy to do business there have been attractive. Companies such as Samsung and Nike have placed big bets on Vietnam as an assembly-factory hub. Certain industries are particularly exposed: 37% of Vietnamese-made footwear and 52% of toys and sports equipment are sent to America.

The fallout could be ruinous. Oxford Economics, a consultancy, has simulated the effects of the tariffs on Vietnam in a “best case” scenario where America’s economy avoids recession, its trading partners avoid retaliation and investment is not deterred by uncertainty. It estimates that by 2026 Vietnamese output will be 3.5% lower compared with the pre-tariff baseline. That would roughly amount to chopping Vietnam’s growth rate in half. In addition, the tariffs undermine the China-plus-one case for investing in Vietnam. The gap in tariffs between China and South-East Asia has now shrunk, reducing the incentive to move productive capacity out of China to skirt them.

Could Vietnam cut a deal? Vietnamese officials have been trying to curry favour with Mr Trump since before the announcement. A trial contract with Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite-internet service, has been signed. The construction of Starlink ground stations will begin there in May or June, according to Reuters. In late March Vietnam announced unilateral reductions of tariffs on American liquified natural gas, cars, energy and agricultural products. Several Vietnamese state-owned and private firms have recently signed deals to buy equipment from America. Work on a new $1.5bn Trump Organisation golf course in Hung Yen province, less than 100km from Hanoi, the capital, is due to start next month.

But Vietnam wants to go further. On April 4th Mr Trump spoke with To Lam, Vietnam’s leader. Mr Trump described the call as “very productive”, noting that Mr Lam “told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the US”. Readouts from the Vietnamese side were more circumspect, with Mr Lam suggesting that America and Vietnam negotiate a mutual 0% tariff rate on each other’s goods. Some in the Vietnamese government believe the time is ripe to negotiate a broader trade deal with America, says Nguyen Khac Giang of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a think-tank in Singapore. In the meantime Mr Lam has sent Mr Trump a letter requesting a 45-day delay to tariff implementation. A Vietnamese delegation, led by the deputy prime minister, is in Washington, aiming to see what might be salvaged.

Vietnam does not have much to offer Mr Trump if his worst protectionist instincts prevail. Vietnam imported goods worth $16bn from America in the 12 months to the end of March, on which it applied an average tariff of 3% in the latest available data. This could be slashed to 0% relatively cheaply, at a cost in foregone revenue of perhaps $1bn a year, reckons Mr Giang. Yet it is not clear this would mollify the Americans. On April 6th Peter Navarro, an arch-protectionist Trump adviser, objected that if America and Vietnam mutually eliminated tariffs, it would leave the $120bn trade deficit intact because of “all of the non-tariff cheating that they do”. Mr Navarro accused Vietnam of subsidising its exports and of acting as a “colony” for re-routing Chinese goods. These objections will be hard to resolve, let alone in 45 days. And Vietnam is worried that too many concessions to America could imperil its 17 other free-trade agreements.

If a deal cannot be reached soon, there may still be some silver linings for Vietnam. One is that direct foreign investors are unlikely to flee right away. Their projects carry high fixed costs and will take years to relocate. They will not be abandoned until there is some clarity about which destinations might be better, a process that Mr Trump’s chaotic decision-making may well delay. Another is that a sharp hit to Vietnam’s export-led growth would probably see the dong, its currency, fall further. This would boost Vietnamese export competitiveness in alternative markets, such as Europe. Vietnam’s central bank manages the dong so that its value closely tracks the dollar—a common choice for smaller, trade-dependent economies—but it will probably have to let the currency weaken in response to the tariffs, says Thang Nguyen of Oxford Economics. Ironically, such a move would play into accusations made during the first Trump administration that Vietnam is a currency manipulator.

Still, these are mitigating factors to what will be a disaster if the tariffs go ahead. Mr Lam’s 8% growth target for 2025 would be in danger, as would his wider ambitions for an “era of national rise”. It would not be without costs for America, either. Vietnam is wary of becoming too close to China—with which it has a long history of conflict and against which it competes for manufacturing prowess. Yet Mr Trump’s tariffs could push it closer to its northern neighbour out of economic necessity. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, will visit Hanoi next week. Vietnam’s strategy of “bamboo diplomacy”, by which it delicately hedges its geopolitical relationships, risks being burnt at the hands of Mr Trump. ■