Vietnam made this week a number of preventive bilateral commercial concessions in the United States in order to avoid the taxation of prices by the Trump administration next week.
According to a Reuters report which quoted a statement published Tuesday evening by the Ministry of Finance, the price on American liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be reduced from 5% to 2%. The tasks on cars will be reduced to 32%, against a range of 45 to 64%, while the ethanol rate will be reduced from 10%to 5%.
In the press release, Nguyen Quoc Hung, the head of the Department of Tax Policies of the Ministry of Finance, said that price reductions aim to “improve trade sales with [Vietnam’s] Trade partners “and will help Vietnam” navigate in complex and unpredictable developments in the global geopolitical and economic situation “.
Hung said that the decree on pricing cuts “will be ready during this month and will take effect just after,” Reuters reported. He added that Vietnam also plans to remove its price on American ethane, and that prices will also be reduced to a range of other “imports, including chicken thighs, almonds, apples, cherries and wooden products”.
While Vietnam and the United States have become closer partners, partly due to shared concerns concerning the growing power of China, the country could be examined by the Trump administration for its massive trade surplus with the United States, which increased by almost a fifth in 2024, reaching a record summit of $ 123.5 billion. Vietnam now has the third trade surplus with the United States of any nation, behind only China and Mexico – which have both been targeted since Trump’s second term in January. In particular, it is fear that the administration to punish Vietnam in the light of the reports according to which Chinese companies have set up factories in Vietnam specifically to avoid prices on goods from China.
The administration should announce a series of reciprocal rates on April 2, which Trump said “Liberation Day”. This follows a complete examination of the trade and treasure departments, including analyzes of persistent American trade deficits and what could be done to remedy it.
Given the obviously unbalanced nature of the American commercial relationship, which also attracted attention during Trump’s first term, Hanoi was proactive to prepare for a possible attention from Washington. Earlier this month, the Minister of Vietnam Trade, Nguyen Hong Dien, led a large delegation in Washington, where representatives of large Vietnamese companies have signed a series of commercial transactions with American companies worth $ 4 billion. These included a memorandum of understanding between Petrovietnam to buy GE equipment to help equip the power with power plants provided by Vietnam, the first two of which should start production of commercial electricity in June. Although Vietnam now does not matter the American LNG, it offers that it uses imports from the United States to provide these factories.
Even before Trump takes up his duties, Vietnamese officials “discreetly recommended American officials and security experts in the importance of the bilateral strategic relationship,” said Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council for Foreign Relations. In this context, this week’s concessions are intended for a sign of good faith that Hanoi hopes that this will avoid the worst of Trump’s anger.
In a decision possibly related to yesterday, the Vietnamese government announced that it had allowed Spacex by Elon Musk to launch its Internet service by Satellite Starlink on trial. The trial period, which will take place until 2030, will allow SpaceX to register a limit of 600,000 customers for the satellite internet service. The talks between SpaceX and the Vietnamese government were said to have been failed at the end of 2024 for Hanoi’s reluctance to facilitate the rules on foreign property of telecommunications companies with the network infrastructure.
That the pre -empty concessions of Vietnam to Trump and Musk make a difference in the way it is treated by the Trump administration remains to be seen. But given the nascent strategic relationship between the United States and Vietnam, the country can certainly make a good argument to be exempt from the worst punishments of Trump’s “Liberation Day”.