NEW DELHI — President Joe Biden goes Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023, to a Vietnam that’s looking to dramatically ramp up trade with the United States — a sign of how competition with China is reshaping relationships across Asia.
The president has made it a point of pride that Vietnam is elevating the United States to the status of being a comprehensive strategic partner. Other countries that Vietnam has extended this designation to include China and Russia. Giving the US the same status suggests that Vietnam wants to hedge its friendships as US and European companies are looking for alternatives to Chinese factories.
Biden said last month at a fundraiser in Salt Lake City that Vietnam doesn’t want a defense alliance with the US, “but they want relationships because they want China to know that they’re not alone” and can choose their own relationships. The president decided to tack a visit to Vietnam on to his trip to India for the Group of 20 summit that winds up Sunday.
With China’s own economic slowdown and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s consolidation of political power, Biden sees an opportunity to bring more nations — including Vietnam and Cambodia — into America’s orbit.
US trade with Vietnam has already accelerated since 2019. But there are limits to how much further it can progress without improvements to the country’s infrastructure, its workers’ skills, and its governance. Nor has increased trade automatically put the Vietnamese economy on an upward trajectory.
Vietnam’s economic growth slipped during the first three months of 2023. Its exporters faced higher costs and weaker demand as high inflation worldwide has hurt the market for consumer goods.
Still, US imports of Vietnamese goods have nearly doubled since 2019 to $127 billion annually, according to the Census Bureau. It is unlikely that Vietnam, with its population of 100 million, can match the scale of Chinese manufacturing. In 2022, China, with 1.4 billion people, exported four times as many goods to the US as did Vietnam. / AP