US exports drove Vietnam’s economic success happymamay

US President Donald Trump’s sweeping scrubs targeting most of the world in effect – and outside China, no other region has been hit by Southeast Asia.

Near the upper part of the list, Vietnam and Cambodia are located in some of the highest definitions: 46 % and 49 %. Moreover, there is Thailand (36 %), Indonesia (32 %) and Malaysia (24 %). The Philippines gets a 17 % tariff, and Singapore is 10 %.

This is a big blow to the area that relies heavily on exports. The large -scale economic development over the past three decades has been largely driven by its success in selling its products to the rest of the world, especially for the United States.

Exports to the United States contribute 23 % of GDP in Vietnam, and 67 % of Cambodia.

This growth story is now at risk due to the punitive measures imposed in Washington.

The long -term influence of these definitions, assuming that they remain in place, will differ, but it will definitely constitute great challenges for the governments of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia in particular.

“Bamboo diplomacy” will now be tested in Vietnam, trying to be a friend of all and balance with both China and the United States.

Under the leadership of the new Communist Party Secretary to Lam, Vietnam has begun in an ambitious plan to build an upper -income economy, knowledge and technology by 2045. It may aim at annual growth rates exceeding 8 %.

The export of more to the United States, already its largest market, was essential in that plan.

This was the main reason for Vietnam’s approval to raise her relationship with a comprehensive strategic partnership process in 2023.

The Communist Party, which is tolerated with a little opposition and has no official political opposition, depends on its economic pledges to its legitimacy. Many economists are already seen as very ambitious, this will now be more difficult.

Thailand depends on US exports less than Vietnam – under 10 % of GDP – but the Thai economy is much worse, as it was less performance over the past decade. The Thai government is trying to find ways to raise economic growth, the most recent of which is trying to codify gambling, and these definitions are another economic blow that cannot be tolerated.

For Cambodia, the customs tariff may pose the largest political threat in the region.

The government of Hun Manit has proven tyranny, just like his father’s government, Hun Sen, who succeeded two years ago, but he is weak.

The preservation of the Hun family is required for the authority to present competing clans in Cambodian economic privileges such as monopolies or land concessions, but this helped to create an abundance of property developments, which no longer sell, and a bloc of grievances on land sources.

The clothing sector, which uses 750,000 people, was a decisive social safety valve, giving a fixed income to the poorest Cambodia. Thousands of these jobs are now possible to waste as a result of President Trump’s definitions.

Unlike China, which has declined with its own drawings, the official message of governments in Southeast Asia is not a state of panic, and does not decrease, but negotiation.

Vietnam sent the Deputy Prime Minister, Doc Fu, to Washington to draw on the issue of his country, and offered the elimination of all definitions on American imports. Thailand plans to send the Minister of Finance to make a similar appeal, and offered to reduce its definitions and buy more American products, such as food and aircraft.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is heading to Washington, although exports to the United States constitute only 11 % of Malaysia, his country is less affected by some of its neighbors.

However, the Trump administration appears to be not in a mood for a settlement.

Peter Navarro, chief adviser to President Trump in trade and manufacturing and one of the main thinkers behind the new policy, said in the interviews on Monday that Vietnam’s offer for zero definitions was meaningless, because he would not address the trade deficit as Vietnam sold $ 15 from the United States for every one dollar he buys.

Vietnam was accused of maintaining many non -transmitted barriers on American imports, and said that a third of all Vietnamese exports to the United States were actually Chinese products, shipped via Vietnam.

It is difficult to evaluate the percentage of Vietnamese exports that are manufactured or shipped to avoid American tariffs on China, but detailed commercial studies have put them between 7 % and 16 %, not a third.

Like Vietnam, the Cambodia government appealed to the United States to postpone definitions during negotiating attempts.

The local American Chamber of Commerce called for 49 % drop -off, which indicates that the manufacture of compassionate clothes, the largest employer in the country, will be affected poorly, but there is no identification level, no matter how high, will witness the return of clothes and shoes to the United States.

Perhaps the most harmful tariff rate is 44 % applied to Myanmar, a country that is mired in a civil war, which has no ability to buy more American goods.

Only American exports make up a small percentage of the gross domestic product of Myanmar, less than 1 %.

But as in Cambodia, this sector, especially clothes, is one of the few that provides a steady income for poor families in the cities of Myanmar.

In the upper paradox, Trump has so far been a common figure in this region.

He was widely admired in Vietnam because of his harsh approach and foreign policy transactions, and the former powerful man in Cambodia, who was still the main force behind the scenes, has sought a close personal relationship with the American president, who proudly published him at his first meeting in 2017.

Only last month Cambodia was building Trump To close the American media networks Voice of America and Radio Free Euro, which often carried the views of the defectors as a Cambodi.

Now, Cambodia, like many of its neighbors, finds herself in a long series of players who waived it to reduce the burden of customs tariffs.