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.
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