As Washington targets long-time allies and formalizes its ‘shoot first, aim later' trade policy, Vietnam — the U.S.’s tenth-largest trading partner — has so far emerged unscathed.
Washington released its 2025 Trade Policy Agenda on Monday, outlining three main objectives: increasing the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP, increasing real median household income, and decreasing the U.S.’s goods deficit. In 2023, the U.S.’s merchandise deficit with Vietnam hit US$104.6 billion, the third-largest deficit of any country after China and Mexico.
But Vietnam is hoping its proactive playbook will spare the country from punishing tariffs. Last weekend in Hanoi, Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, met with close to 40 American business executives, telling them that Vietnam was “taking measures to rebalance its trade surplus with the U.S.,” and noted an openness to increasing imports of American planes, agricultural products, arms, and more.
Chinh also directed his government to “quickly” issue a licence to Starlink, Elon Musk’s internet company, on a trial basis. Musk runs U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Taiwan’s TSMC, the semiconductor giant, has so far dodged tariffs through a similar proactive tactic, with the company’s CEO, in a press conference alongside Trump this week, pledging US$100 billion in investments into the U.S.
