The US trade deficit with Vietnam exceeded US$110 billion in the first 11 months of last month, latest US figures showed, as exports from the Southeast Asian industrial hub grew amid a record fall of its currency against the US dollar.
The latest reading, released on Tuesday by the US statistics agency, showed a nearly 18 percent rise in the deficit compared with the same period the previous year.
The data confirms the country has the fourth-highest commercial surplus with the US, topped only by China, the EU and Mexico.
Photo: Bloomberg
The large gap is seen by analysts as a major risk for the export-reliant nation amid threats from US president-elect Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up to 20 percent on all US imports.
That risk has been compounded by a sharp fall of Vietnam’s dong in recent months, with the dong trading near its lowest ever levels against the US dollar. The trend is closely watched in Washington as Vietnam is one of the countries under scrutiny for potential currency manipulation.
Vietnam, which counts the US as its biggest market, is home to big export-focused industrial operations of US multinationals such as Apple Inc, Google, Nike Inc and Intel Corp.
Latest seasonally adjusted trade figures showed that the trade gap with the US expanded by US$11.3 billion in November, accelerating from October, while in the January-to-November period Vietnam accumulated a trade surplus of US$111.6 billion, up from US$94.8 billion in the same period in 2023. Unadjusted data pointed to a larger gap of US$113.1 billion.
“If the US perceives that Vietnam is deliberately keeping the dong weak to gain an unfair trade advantage, it could trigger renewed accusations of currency manipulation,” said Leif Schneider, head of international law firm Luther LLC in Vietnam.
Trump ended his first term in the White House with Treasury declarations of Vietnam and Switzerland as currency manipulators over their market interventions to weaken the value of their currencies.
Vietnam’s central bank has said it was ready to intervene in the foreign exchange market in case of adverse economic impacts from currency moves and has sold US dollars in the past to strengthen the dong.
The dong’s most recent depreciation against the US dollar is broadly in line with other major currencies.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for