Great Potential In Import – Export Between Vietnam And The US In 2021

Dating back to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, international trade between Vietnam and the US had not started yet due to the extension of President Richard Nixon’s 1964 trade embargo. During that period of time, all of the two-way trade between the two countries was prohibited. After a lot of effort to relieve the postwar relationship between Vietnam and the US, on February 3, 1994, President Bill Clinton officially lifted the US trade embargo on Vietnam. On July 13, 2000, the first bilateral trade agreement (BTA) was signed by two governments, revitalizing the trade relations between two economies.  

For the first several years after the BTA, Asian countries such as Japan, China, Singapore, etc. were the ones which conducted the majority of active trade activities with Vietnam (according to the statistics of the World Integrated Trade Solutions). The US was not included among the list of top trading partners. However, things have changed dramatically in the last decade as witnessed by the rocket in the import – export turnover between Vietnam and the big partner – the US. 

Based on the bar charts above, it can be shown that trade has brought a powerful impact to both economies, impressively contributing to the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP) of each country. From around 5 billion USD in exports and 1 billion USD in imports in 2004, the values grew to over 61 billion USD and 14 billion USD in exports and imports respectively in 2019. Nowadays, the USA has become the biggest export industry of Vietnam (National Institute for Finance of Vietnam). There is another interesting proof that the potential of international trade growth between Vietnam and the US is unstoppable. Even under the negatively strong impact of COVID-19 on world economies, the total import-export turnovers between these two countries still kept growing and reached over 90 billion USD in 2020. 

Regarding the major export products from Vietnam to the US, the top exports included such as machinery, equipment, tools, spare parts; computers, electronic products and components; phones and accessories; apparel and clothing accessories; seafood; and agro products. In return, Vietnam also imports a large amount of computers, electronic products and components; cotton; machinery, equipment, tools and spare parts, etc. from the US. In addition, there are many more Vietnamese consumer products with potential to develop such as bamboo-related products, medical products, steel products, and so on thanks to the Vietnamese advantages of low raw material and labor costs in the manufacturing and the large demand for such  commodities in the US. 

In conclusion, based on the historical statistics  plus the strengths that the two countries can exploit and provide for each other based on their demand, it is strongly expected that the import-export turnovers between Vietnam and the USA in 2021 will continue to increase. As a result, the opportunities for the businesses in the two economies to expand abroad are extremely bright. The problems raised are how can the business leaders overcome all of the legal, cultural, language, and finance obstacles when entering the foreign markets? That’s the reason why Noble Network is here to help. 

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