Yahoo News Vietnam Spoke With Trump and Is Working on Its Golf Diplomacy
(Bloomberg) -- Vietnam Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said his country’s top leader recently chatted with Donald Trump and is ready to deal with the new US president and his administration.
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“Our Party General Secretary To Lam has spoken with President Trump on telephone,” and his government has made “some approaches” to Trump’s administration, Chinh told the World Economic Forum on Tuesday in Davos. “We think we can handle the relationship with the US.”
The Southeast Asian government is pursuing an ambitious goal of boosting growth to at least 8% this year but faces uncertainty over the prospect of tariffs.
Vietnam was a major beneficiary of the first US-China trade war, but its ballooning trade imbalance with the US and Trump’s determination to bring more manufacturing jobs back home makes it a target for protectionist policies.
Chinh said Vietnam is “working on solutions” to re-balance its trade surplus with the US, reiterating a promise to buy Boeing Co. planes, and expressing an interest in purchasing other American high-tech items.
“If playing golf can help bring benefits to my country and my people, then I can play golf all day long,” Chinh said, eliciting chuckles from the audience, as he responded to a question on whether he’d be willing to travel to Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago in Florida to meet and play a round with the US president.
Double-digit growth in exports, along with resilient foreign investment and strong manufacturing helped the economy expand 7.55% in the fourth quarter last year, surpassing all expectations and taking full year growth to 7.09%, well above the government’s target for 2024.
While the National Assembly has set an economic growth target of 6.5%-7% this year, Chinh said last month that the government sees 2025 as “the year of acceleration” and would strive for about 8% growth.
Vietnam is also undergoing the biggest political reform in decades as the Communist Party seeks to cut the size of government by around 20%, to streamline the bureaucracy, and reduce red tape and costs.
Last year, the government’s highest echelons also underwent a reshuffle after the death of country’s long-serving Communist Party general secretary. Chinh tacitly referred to this, noting Vietnam experienced “a change in a generation of leadership without warning.”
Chinh also said Vietnam is issuing legal instruments and policies to promote the development of artificial intelligence. He added the country is also seeking to develop a national database to connect different ministries and localities.
Like governments around the region, Vietnam has sought to pull in capital from foreign tech giants as the country emerges as a viable alternative to China in the manufacturing of everything from gadgets to basic semiconductors. Intel Corp. operates a chip assembly and test manufacturing facility in Ho Chi Minh City, and the country has also attracted the likes of Apple Inc. suppliers and Samsung Electronics Co.
Samsung will invest in a second R&D center in Hanoi after the government offered some policy incentives, while Nvidia Corp. is working with Vietnam to develop research and development centers in the country, Chinh said. “We are also focusing our investment in a training program with the goal to have 50,000-100,000 engineers in semiconductor and AI area,” he said.
Chinh last year vowed to lure “crucial” foreign investment to AI development by cutting logistics costs and improving infrastructure, as the country seeks to establish itself as a global hub for advanced technology.
Read: FPT Plans $200 Million Vietnam ‘AI Factory’ With Nvidia Tech
Vietnam has targeted over $100 billion a year in revenue from the semiconductor industry by 2050 and set out ambitious plans for a sector seen as key to economic expansion. The government aims to set up three big data centers and three AI centers by 2030, according to a national strategy released in 2021.
Communist Party chief To Lam said the top priority is that by 2030, Vietnam will become a country with a modern industry, and by 2045 become a developed country with high income, according to a Dec. 31 government post.
(Adds Chinh comments in 13th paragraph.)
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