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TRADE UPDATE IN FEB 2025: RECIPROCAL TARIFF ON VIETNAM EXPORTS TO THE US?

The decline in trade growth in the first month of the year was due to the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday.
The Government's trade growth target for 2025 is 12%, equivalent to Rong Viet's forecast.
Some key export items still recorded positive growth in January 2025. Meanwhile, the overall import scale decreased, but the demand for imported raw materials for the production of electronics, machinery and equipment still increased. This implies that export orders in the first quarter of the year continued to grow.
The proportion of imported goods from China increased sharply in January 2025, implying a shift of goods and supply chains to Vietnam in the short term, while also increasing the risk of becoming a target of US tariffs.
3 possible scenarios for the roadmap for reciprocal tariffs.
Vietnam is in the low-risk group in terms of tariff relations with the US and the possibility that the Trump administration will consider considering VAT as a trade barrier for imports from the US.
However, Vietnam's risks will be high in terms of its trade deficit with the US (~$123 billion (2024), ranking 4th after China, the EU and Mexico) or the fact that Vietnam is still under scrutiny for currency manipulation and has not been recognized by the US as a market economy.