Vietnam Surpasses China as Largest Source of U.S. Trade Surplus
Nashnova编辑部
Vietnam's trade surplus with the U.S. hit $114 billion in the first half of this year, topping China, Taiwan, and Mexico; the tariff gap is redrawing global supply chains in real time.
How did Vietnam leapfrog China to the top?
In H1, Vietnam's surplus with the U.S. reached $114 billion. U.S. imports from Vietnam totaled $123 billion, up 40% year-on-year — surpassing the full-year 2023 total in just six months.
This means → Vietnam did not climb gradually; it vaulted into first place within a single half-year window.
The direct driver is the tariff gap: in June the effective tariff on Chinese goods was 23.2%, versus just 6.5% for Vietnam and a global average of 7%. In plain terms = the same product shipped from China costs more than triple the duty, so companies vote with their feet.
Which companies have already moved — and why?
On the large-cap side, Apple, Nike, and Lululemon have all shifted portions of production to Vietnam over the past decade.
Smaller firms followed. Bruce Krinsky, founder of Miami-based furniture maker TOV Furniture, said: "We moved purely because of tariffs." The company's China-to-Vietnam sourcing ratio flipped from 60:25 to 25:60.
This means → relocation is no longer a big-company play. When Vietnam's import duty is half of China's (25% vs. roughly 50%), even mid-size firms can do the math.
"Vietnam is just a pass-through for Chinese goods" — does that hold up?
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has accused Chinese firms of trans-shipping through third countries. Mark Gillin, chair of AmCham Vietnam, pushed back: roughly 60% of Vietnam's exports to the U.S. are machinery, electronics, and appliances, produced by multinationals like Samsung, Intel, and Foxconn with large-scale factories on the ground.
Gillin's words: "Look at the enormous growth in electronics and you know where the goods are coming from. This isn't about shipping garments across a border and slapping on a new label."
This reflects a key fact: the core driver of Vietnam's surplus is real installed capacity, not label-swapping.
What happened to China's numbers?
U.S. imports from China fell from $168 billion in the year-ago period to $129 billion in H1 — a decline of nearly one-quarter.
In plain terms = a large share of Vietnam's gain is China's loss — trade flows are visibly relocating under the tariff lever.
Can Vietnam keep absorbing this volume?
Vietnam is not the largest source of U.S. goods imports — Mexico and Canada lead by a wide margin, and Taiwan and China also rank above Vietnam. Vietnam's distinction is that it imports very little from the U.S., creating a massive one-sided surplus.
Two variables will decide whether this pattern lasts: whether tariff policy keeps the pressure gap on China, and whether Vietnam's own supply-chain capacity can keep pace with the production flooding in.
This means → Vietnam's rise to the top is more of a policy prism — it refracts the force with which tariffs are reshaping global supply chains, not a leap in Vietnam's economic heft per se.
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