August 9, 2019, By Vietnam Weekly
A few weeks ago I discussed President Trump's rather out-of-the-blue comments on America's trade imbalance with Vietnam, and unsurprisingly it seems the latter is working hard to avoid tariffs.
According to VnExpress, imports from the US rose 19% in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2018. Auto imports saw the fastest growth, rising 107% and worth over US$24 million (an interesting tidbit given how hard VinFast is pushing to establish themselves here).
Meanwhile, in what seems like a truly horrendous idea for the climate, the state coal producer is considering importing coal from the US amid fast-rising power demand here (as mentioned last week, the government has admitted that major electricity shortages are expected by 2021). Such a move would also help to narrow the trade surplus Vietnam has with the US, but I'm hard-pressed to think of anything more retrograde in this era of searching for ways to reduce carbon emissions than mining coal in one country, transporting it around the world on a polluting ship and then feeding it into a coal-burning power plant in another country.
Finally, Bloomberg Businessweek has a piece on Vietnam's potentially fragile position amid the trade war. (Bloomberg has gotten an incredible amount of mileage on this topic.)
