TMTPOST -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed his administration has made a breakthrough in ongoing trade negotiations: the third trade deal ahead of the July 9 deadline for reciprocal tariffs.
Credit：U.S. Embassy & Consulate in Vietnam
Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social that he made a trade deal with Vietnam after speaking with To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee. Touting the deal as “a Great Deal of Cooperation between our two Countries”, Trump said the two sides agreed that the U.S. would impose 20% tariffs on all goods imported from Vietnam and 40% tariffs on “any Transshipping.”
The “transshipping” tariff means “if another country sells their content through products exported by Vietnam to us — they’ll get hit with a 40% tariff”, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick clarified in a post on social media X later Wednesday.
The 20% tariff rate is higher than the current 10% level but lower than the 46% reciprocal tariffs Trump announced on April 2, a date the president proclaimed “Liberation Day”. Trump on April 9 said that he has authorized a 90-day pause and “a substantially lowered reciprocal tariff” of 10% during this period, both effective immediately. Vietnam, like many other countries, since then faced a 10% baseline reciprocal tariffs and the original proposed 46% reciprocal tariffs on Vietnam would have been set to kick in on July 9, after the 90-day pause, if no trade deal was made to avoid these levies by the deadline.
Trump’s social media post suggested Vietnam agreed to offer duty-free to U.S. goods in exchange for relatively lower reciprocal tariffs. “In return, Vietnam will do something that they have never done before, give the United States of America TOTAL ACCESS to their Markets for Trade. In other words, they will ‘OPEN THEIR MARKET TO THE UNITED STATES,’ meaning that, we will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at ZERO Tariff,” Trump wrote in his post.
Trump didn’t say whether the deal has been finalized, nor provide details about the deal such as when it will come into effect. White House aides told CNBC more information would be forthcoming but did not repeat the president’s numbers. US Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender didn’t answer CNBC whether the 20% tariff would come on top of the existing 10% tariff on goods from Vietnam or whether 20% would be the new level.
The state-run news agency Vietnam News Agency (VNA) following Trump’s post confirmed a phone call between heads of two nations. General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee To Lam on Wednesday welcomed a new trade agreement with the United States during a phone call with Trump, VNA reported.
Lam urged Washington to soon recognize Vietnam as a market economy and to lift export restrictions on certain high-tech goods, according to VNA. It reported the two leaders also discussed major directions and measures to further strengthen the Vietnam-U.S. comprehensive strategic partnership in the coming years.
