Counterfeit goods have been highlighted as one non-tariff barrier that led to the recently announced US tariffs on Vietnamese goods. Vietnam is now responding to try to bring down those tariffs by launching a crackdown on counterfeits. So, how prevalent is the counterfeit goods trade in Vietnam? Can it be stopped? And if it can, why hasn’t it been already?
Popular Ho Chi Minh City mall, Saigon Square, is well known for its cheap counterfeit goods and not just by price-sensitive consumers. It is well known by the authorities too, raided by the police again, and again, and again.
It has, however, always managed to bounce back post-raid with shelves quickly restocked with counterfeit sneakers and handbags and sunglasses among a range of other fake goods.
This, however, may be a bigger problem now than it has been in the past.
Specifically, the US has cited a failure to crackdown on the practice as partial justification for the 46 percent “reciprocal tariffs” it intends to apply to goods of Vietnamese origin, announced at the beginning of April, but on hold until the start of July.
Eager to see those tariffs reduced to something more manageable, in recent days, the Government of Vietnam has announced a nationwide crackdown on counterfeits set to run for the next month or so.
But will a one-month crackdown be enough to make significant change? Moreover, can enough be done in one month to satisfy the Trump administration?
To answer that it’s important to first understand the scope of the problem.
Vietnam’s counterfeit challenge is most definitely not confined to Saigon Square. Fakes are available at markets all over Vietnam and fake just about everything at that, from beer to laundry detergent to pharmaceuticals.
Moreover, growing internet penetration and the rise of social commerce have seen the online marketplace for counterfeit goods surge. In particular, social networking sites Facebook and Zalo have become key retail channels for cheap fakes alongside major e-commerce platforms like Shopee.
Notably, these online sales are much more difficult to track and their purveyors more difficult to find.
That said, attempts to police the practice in the past, when perpetrators have been known, have not been all that effective.
And there are a couple of key reasons for this.
For one, raids on counterfeiting operations often involve multiple government departments, which struggle to communicate consistently and coherently with each other.
Moreover, the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition noted in a 2023 submission to the USTR that it had “…heard troubling reports of raids being compromised when targets were tipped off in advance, raising concerns about possible corruption.”
That aside, when offenders are arrested, the challenges continue.
For one, courts are often unfamiliar with IP issues and tend to move slowly.
Furthermore, when they do get a conviction, the punishments they mete out are usually administrative rather than criminal (in 2023, of 776 IP infringement cases, just five were the subject of criminal proceedings). Fines are also often so low that they have little value as a deterrent, with many perpetrators factoring them in as just another cost of doing business.
But whereas enforcement might be weak, Vietnam does have a significant intellectual property protection legal framework in place.
It has signed on to most of the key world intellectual property agreements–the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, for example.
However, the conditions of these agreements have been slow to materialise in practice.
Notably, it wasn’t until 2022 that a revised Intellectual Property Law closed long-standing gaps in domestic enforcement, including some tied to the Paris Convention, to which Vietnam has been a party since 1949.
Also of note, this reform was largely driven by several next-generation free trade agreements—such as the EVFTA and the CPTPP—which contain binding intellectual property provisions and allow member states to pursue retaliatory measures through formal dispute settlement mechanisms if breaches are established.
That is to say, the long delays may speak to local attitudes toward intellectual property protection in that, with few globally recognised brands of its own, Vietnam has historically faced little domestic pressure to strengthen IP protections.
And it is this that has meant slow, gradual change.
Moreover, Vietnam’s trade partners have historically favoured a more cooperative, dialogue-driven approach to resolving the issue, which by its very nature takes time.
That said, the US now seems to have put away the carrot and pulled out the stick, and, at a glance, it does seem to be having a significant impact.
The Prime Minister’s month-long counterfeit crackdown has been sprawled across local news sites for the last week or so, with a “special task force” established to be led by Deputy Prime Minister Bui Thanh Son, and local political commentators urging consumers to rise up and reject counterfeit goods, framing this move as a national imperative.
“It’s not just a crackdown,” proclaimed one article in the official Government Newspaper. “It’s a moral market renewal. And that’s what this country desperately needs to enter a new era.”
And this is all well and good. The reality, however, is that for this campaign to be successful, it will take resources and manpower, neither of which Vietnam has a lot of, let alone in excess.
On that note, it’s also considering financial commitments elsewhere to try and bring those tariffs down (aircraft or LNG purchases, for example). Its pockets, however, are not bottomless–they’re not even really deep–and determining where its limited resources can be best applied will be challenging.
A positive outcome in terms of US tariffs is also far from assured.
Intellectual property enforcement is just one among many non-tariff barriers the US Trade Representative highlighted in its 2025 National Trade Estimate Report, alongside sanitary barriers, local ownership caps, and tax-related obstacles.
Resolving any one issue, be it the trade in counterfeit goods or otherwise, will likely just mean a shift of focus for US trade negotiators to something else.
But this is not for nothing. Any action on counterfeit goods is better than no action at all with protection of intellectual property rights usually a key consideration for international brands and trademark holders looking to manufacture abroad.
It’s just that, given how deeply counterfeit goods are embedded in the local economy and the time constraint the negotiations are under, the hope really needs to be that the Trump administration isn’t looking for much more than a demonstration of good-faith efforts to tackle the counterfeit goods trade.