VietNamNet Bridge - “The surplus in trade with the US is not good at all. A deficit would be more reasonable for developing economies like Vietnam,” said Bui Ngoc Son of the Institute of World Economics and Politics.


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The latest report by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) about the import/export in 2016 showed that the US and the EU were Vietnam’s two biggest export markets despite big difficulties.

The US spent $38.1 billion to buy Vietnam’s goods, while it only exported $8.7 billion worth of products to Vietnam. This means that the US saw the deficit of $29 billion in trade with Vietnam.

Son said the excess of imports over exports in trade with the US has been seen for many years and is not a surprise.

Vietnam mostly exports farm produce, seafood, footwear and textile and garments thanks to the cheap labor force. It imports from the US computers, electronics, machines and animal feed, but in small quantities.

In general, developing countries import more than export because they need to import machines and modern technologies from developed countries, including the US. But the situation in Vietnam is the opposite.

“We don’t import products from the US because US products are always expensive,” he said. “Vietnam has been relying heavily on cheap Chinese technologies.”

The MOIT report also showed that China remains the largest market with which Vietnam has actrade deficit. The value reached $28 billion in 2016.

Pham Tat Thang, a senior researcher from MOIT, confirmed that Vietnam usually exports to the US, Japan and the EU more than imports from the markets

Meanwhile, in trade with Asia, Vietnam usually imports more than exports, especially from China.

The US spent $38.1 billion to buy Vietnam’s goods, while it only exported $8.7 billion worth of products to Vietnam. This means that the US saw the deficit of $29 billion in trade with Vietnam.
“We still cannot import modern source technologies from the countries (Japan, the EU and the US) to improve strength of production,” he said.

Vietnam hopes that once the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) agreement comes true, it would be able to import high technologies from the countries which would help develop Vietnam’s support industries.

However, it is still unclear about the fate of TPP. The newly elected US President Trump many times repeated that the US would withdraw from TPP.

Thang commented that he can see both good and bad news in the trade surplus with the US. 

“The good thing is that we can export products to the US, a very choosy market,” he said, adding that in 2016, many kinds of farm produce and fruits obtained rights to export to the US.

“The bad thing is that we still cannot import source technologies from the US,” he said.


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