HANOI: Vietnam is reviewing import duties on goods from the United States, the government said, as anxiety mounts in Hanoi over potential tariffs under President Donald Trump’s administration.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh told US ambassador Marc Knapper that the review would look to encourage increased imports of liquified natural gas, as well as agricultural and high-tech products, a report on the government’s website said on Thursday (Mar 13).
Vietnam represents the United States’s third-highest trade deficit, behind China and Mexico.
There is increasing worry that Hanoi could be the next target of Trump’s tariffs, which have sent shockwaves through global markets.
Chinh told Knapper during a meeting on Thursday that Vietnam is “actively addressing the current concerns of the US in economic-trade-investment relations”, including sending Vietnam’s top trade official to the United States this week, the report said.
Vietnam is also “reviewing import tariffs on goods from the United States, encouraging increased imports of key US products that Vietnam needs, especially agricultural products, liquefied gas and high-tech products”, the report added.
The trade official, Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien, was in Washington on Thursday for a meeting with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Greer told Dien that Vietnam “needs to have stronger solutions to open the market and improve the trade balance”, according to a report on the website of Vietnam’s trade ministry.
Dien said that Vietnam was working to build a “harmonious, sustainable” economic and trade relationship with the United States, the government report said.
The US trade deficit in goods with Vietnam was US$123.5 billion in 2024, up more than 18 per cent on 2023, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
Vietnam is a manufacturing powerhouse that is heavily reliant on exports. The United States was the country’s biggest export market in 2024.
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