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Key Challenges in Vietnam-US Trade Negotiations: Unpacked
Vietnam’s Private Sector Development Push: Unpacked
Vietnam’s Aviation Industry: State of Play 2025
Vietnam and the Middle Income Trap: Unpacked
Vietnam’s 8 Percent GDP Growth Target: Unpacked
Buy More, Sell Less: Tackling Vietnam’s Trade Surplus with the US
Is Vietnam the Next Asian Tiger Economy?
What Recent Traffic Reforms Say About Doing Business in Vietnam
Building An International Financial Centre in Vietnam: Unpacked
Vietnam’s Economy in 2024: A Brief Recap
What to Watch Now Google Has An Office in Vietnam
Does Vietnam Have a Private Consumption Problem Too?
The 8th Session of Vietnam’s National Assembly: Key Takeaways
Rethinking Financing Vietnam’s Clean Energy Transition
Vietnam’s New Social Media ID Regulations: Unpacked
Tag: features
The Features category includes in-depth analyses, expert opinions, and long-form reports on key industries, policies, and market developments. It explores trends, challenges, and opportunities across various sectors, providing comprehensive insights for professionals, businesses, and policymakers.
Vietnam’s Revised Power Development Plan 8: A Missed Opportunity
Last week, the Government of Vietnam issued a Decision significantly revising the Power Development Plan 8 (PDP8). However, whereas this could have been an opportunity to redesign the PDP8 to align more closely with on-the-ground realities, this opportunity looks to have been missed.
Key Challenges in Vietnam-US Trade Negotiations: Unpacked
The US-China tit-for-tat trade war has seen tariffs on China rise to 145 percent and tariffs on the US reach 125 percent. As a key link between these two economies, this puts Vietnam in a tricky situation entering trade negotiations with the United States. Add to that the often contradictory objectives of its foreign-invested and domestically owned sectors and this should make for some very interesting negotiations.
What’s Next for Vietnam if Trump’s 46 Percent Tariff is Here To Stay?
Last week, the President of the United States Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from all over the world. Among them was a 46 percent tariff on imports from Vietnam. This will have broad implications for Vietnam’s economy and the world economy more broadly. With this in mind, this article looks at what Trump hopes to achieve and the way he intends to achieve it, both of which make it look a lot like these tariffs are here to stay. That being the case, it also looks at the implications for Vietnam and ways it might be able to formulate an impact-mitigating response.
Could Vietnam Benefit From a Bit of Polish ‘Shock Therapy’?
Vietnam wants to develop fast but this will require significant economic reforms and for those reforms to be implemented quickly. But whereas there is a tendency to look regionally for economic models to emulate, it might also be worth looking to the ex-Soviet Eastern European states, like Poland, which went from a low-income to high-income economy in only a few decades. With this in mind, this article looks at what Poland did that allowed for such a rapid change in its fortunes and whether or not Vietnam can do the same.
Vietnam’s Private Sector Development Push: Unpacked
Last week, Vietnam’s relatively new General Secretary, To Lam, announced that he wanted to see Vietnam’s private sector expand to 70 percent of GDP by 2030. This is not a new concept but it has historically been somewhat of a struggle to realise. With this in mind, this article looks at Vietnam’s private sector development, why it has failed to break out, and what might be different this time around.
Can South Korea’s Chaebol Development Model Work for Vietnam?
The South Korean chaebols are constantly referenced as a model to be emulated in Vietnam. However, whereas at first glance South Korea’s economic development on the back of its chaebols looks to be a success story, that doesn’t really tell the whole story. With this in mind, this article looks at how the chaebols system worked and didn’t work and whether this is a model Vietnam should be looking to follow.
Vietnam’s Aviation Industry: State of Play 2025
Vietnam’s airline industry has been struggling to find its footing since COVID-19. Whereas some of the problems facing the industry last year have been alleviated, it still faces a number of challenges, many of its own making, and a full recovery may still be a long way away. This article breaks down those challenges and the outlook for the industry moving forward.
Right Now, a Weak Dong Could be Good for Vietnam. Here’s Why.
The depreciation of the Vietnamese dong has picked up speed since the Lunar New Year break with the State Bank of Vietnam easing its intervention efforts. This is not, however, necessarily a bad thing and could even be a good thing in certain circumstances. With this in mind, this article looks at Vietnam’s monetary policy and how it is changing, who benefits from a stronger dong, who benefits from a weaker dong, and how these outcomes are connected.
Vietnam and the Middle Income Trap: Unpacked
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the risk Vietnam faces with respect to growth stagnating, and the country becoming stuck in the middle-income trap. Most of this talk, however, has focused on the level of GDP growth that needs to be reached and maintained rather than the specific policy and structural reforms needed. With this in mind, this article looks at what the middle-income trap is, how countries get themselves stuck in it and how they get out, and where Vietnam fits in a slightly more policy-focused discussion.
Vietnam’s 8 Percent GDP Growth Target: Unpacked
There has been a lot of buzz around an 8 percent GDP growth target recently approved by Vietnam’s National Assembly. It is, however, just a target and ultimately doesn’t really mean much on a practical level. This article looks at what GDP growth targets do, the problems they present, and the outcomes or lack thereof.
Buy More, Sell Less: Tackling Vietnam’s Trade Surplus with the US
Vietnam has been repeatedly singled out by US officials with respect to its trade surplus with the United States. This hasn’t, so far, seen any targeted trade implications for Vietnam (i.e. tariffs) from the US administration, but it is increasingly looking like it is only a matter of time. With this in mind, this article looks at how Vietnam might address the trade imbalance by buying more US goods, and/or reducing its exports to the US.
Is Vietnam the Next Asian Tiger Economy?
This article looks at what the Asian Tigers were before 1997, what happened in 1997 when the AFC hit, and then what that might say about Vietnam’s current economic development trajectory.
What Recent Traffic Reforms Say About Doing Business in Vietnam
Change is afoot on the typically chaotic streets of Vietnam with significantly increased fines introduced at the start of the year for a myriad of traffic violations. These changes can in many ways be seen as a proxy for Vietnam’s economic development more broadly. Here’s how.
Building An International Financial Centre in Vietnam: Unpacked
At the end of December, the Government of Vietnam passed Resolution No 259/NQ-CP approving a plan to create regional and international financial centres in Danang and Ho Chi Minh City. Whereas the plan puts the emphasis on location this article looks at the regulatory issues holding this project back.
Vietnam’s Economy in 2024: A Brief Recap
Vietnam had a bumper year in 2024 based on GDP figures alone. Released on Monday, data from the General Office of Statistics, found that the economy had increased in size by 7.09 percent, a significant jump from the 5.05 percent it recorded in 2023. But that’s not to say Vietnam is on a sure footing heading into 2025 (it actually looks more to the contrary) or that everyone was a winner…
What to Watch Now Google Has An Office in Vietnam
Last week, Google announced it had opened an office in HCMC. This has been a long time coming and this makes Google one of the first big tech firms to do so. That said, the operating environment Google is entering is complicated and with this in mind, this article unpacks a few of the challenges Google might face.
Does Vietnam Have a Private Consumption Problem Too?
When reports of a private consumption problem in China surfaced, it made sense to wonder if Vietnam might be facing those same problems too. And indeed, whereas it’s fairly easy to assume that Vietnam’s booming economy might correlate to booming consumer consumption, the numbers paint a somewhat different picture…
The 8th Session of Vietnam’s National Assembly: Key Takeaways
Vietnam’s 15th National Assembly wrapped up its 8th session on the weekend bringing to the end a month of debate and discussion with a number of new laws and amendments to existing laws approved. Here’s a few key takeaways for firms doing business in Vietnam…
Rethinking Financing Vietnam’s Clean Energy Transition
That is to say, practically speaking, the implementation of Vietnam’s JETP agreement looks to have stalled. That being the case, it might be time to start considering other options.
Vietnam’s New Social Media ID Regulations: Unpacked
The passage of Decree 157, which adds verification requirements for social media accounts in Vietnam, has caused a stir amid claims this will be used to identify distributors of content deemed ‘anti-state’. This may be true, but it seems unlikely this is the actual intent of these new regulations, with several much more pressing reasons for these new requirements…