HANOI: Vietnam mentioned it reduce import duties on a variety of products, together with automobiles, liquefied fuel and a few agricultural merchandise, with issues escalating forward of US President Donald Trump’s deliberate unveiling of sweeping tariffs on “all nations”.
The announcement got here after Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh mentioned final month that Hanoi was reviewing levies with a purpose to encourage elevated imports from america.
Washington’s commerce deficit with Vietnam is the third highest of any nation, after China and Mexico, and there are rising fears it could possibly be a key goal of the White Home’s tariff drive, which has despatched shockwaves via international markets.
“From Mar 31, 2025, sure gadgets resembling automobiles, wooden, ethanol, frozen hen legs, pistachios, almonds, recent apples, cherries, raisins, and many others, shall be topic to a brand new preferential import responsibility charge,” an announcement mentioned late Monday (Mar 31) on the federal government’s official information portal.
It added that import duties on some automobiles shall be halved and the tax charge for liquefied pure fuel will drop from 5 per cent to 2 per cent.
Tariffs on frozen hen legs shall be decreased from 20 per cent to fifteen per cent, the charges on unshelled pistachios shall be slashed from 15 per cent to five per cent, and for almonds, it’s going to drop from 10 per cent to five per cent.
“I consider that Vietnam is doing all the things they’ll to melt the blow,” mentioned Bruno Jaspaert, CEO at DEEP C Industrial Zones in Vietnam and chairman of the nation’s European chamber of commerce.
“Quite than retaliate, they provide, and hope to be handled in a greater means than most. However the general expectation is that there’ll nonetheless be tariffs,” he informed AFP.
