(Hanoi) Vietnam pushes a sigh of relief after the customs agreement with the United States, which spares it a level of taxation threatening its economic vitality, but analysts wonder Thursday about the details of the text that targets China without naming it.
After weeks of negotiations, this Southeast Asian country became the second state on Wednesday to agree with Washington on Wednesday after the United Kingdom, a few days before the Butory Date where a massive customs increase that gave cold sweats to communist leaders.
The United States has agreed to abandon its plan to surcharge the “Made in Vietnam” products to 46 %, a prohibitive rate which they justified by their commercial deficit of $ 123 billion in 2024-the third largest after China and Mexico.
Imports from Vietnam will ultimately be struck only by a surcharge of 20 %, however rate doubled at 40 % for products designed elsewhere which only transit through the country, by so -called transhipment methods.
“Transhipment”
“It is a much better result than a fixed rate of 46 %, but I would not be delighted immediately,” said Dan Martin, of the consulting firm Dezan Shira & Associates, based in Hanoi.
“Everything will depend on how the United States will decide to interpret and apply the idea of transhipment,” he said.
The Trump administration rebelled against Chinese companies that produce in China and make their products pass through Vietnam to bypass higher American customs taxes that aim at Beijing.
Anxious to respond to American accusations, Hanoi has promised to strengthen controls on the origin of his exports.
The volume of exchanges between Vietnam and the United States exploded during the first term of President Trump, under the effect of the taxes imposed by Washington against China. Doped by its role as a commercial crossroads, Vietnam displayed in 2024 the highest economic growth rate in Southeast Asia, at 7.1 %.
Hanoi and Beijing have recently committed to continuing their rapprochement, in particular through construction – approved in February – of a rail line connecting the industrial port of Haiphong to the industrialized regions of southern China.
However, defining what is “transhipment” is complex, the persistent uncertainty on the American definition: will it also include the spare parts of a final product? And from what proportion?
“The question that arises now is how China will react” to this apparently agreement to its detriment, underlines Rana Sajedi, an economist for Bloomberg Economics.
“Any retaliatory measure [de] could have a considerable impact on the Vietnamese economy, ”she continues.
China precisely warned on Thursday against commercial negotiations which “harm” the “third parties”, by the voice of the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning.
The agreement with Washington could lead to a 25 % drop in Vietnam exports to the United States, endangering almost 2 % of its gross domestic product, also calculates Mme Sadeji.
Flip -flops
The terms of the agreement will significantly increase the price of shoes and clothes that the Southeast Asian nation exports en masse to the United States.
In 2024, the United States imported for some $ 136 billion in Vietnamese products, mainly products with low added value.
Clothing and sports equipment manufacturers were initially leaping to Wall Street on Wednesday, before falling after a second message from Donald Trump evoking the Hanoi dealerships. Asian Apple suppliers with production in Vietnam also climbed on Thursday on the stock market.
The agreement also provides for a zero taxation for American products exported to Vietnam-they represented $ 13 billion last year-, but the Asian country remains a small market for the United States: for them, the impact will be “probably marginal”, judge Bloomberg Economics.
Vietnam, very dependent on exports, did not have many advantages in its hand when negotiating, underline the Economics Capital Experts in a note.
The agreement reached offers a model that other countries will not necessarily want to follow, they believe: “the key lesson they will draw is that they are asked to reduce their exchanges with China”.
