President Trump recently announced on social media that the U.S. and Vietnam have reached agreement on a trade deal, just ahead of the deadline on which U.S. “reciprocal” tariffs are set to increase. Under that plan, most goods imported from Vietnam would have been subject to a 46% tariff, rather than the 10% baseline rate in place since April.
No text or specific details of the deal have been released, but President Trump stated that goods arriving from Vietnam will be tariffed at 20% unless they are products made elsewhere (including China) that are transshipping Vietnam. Transhipped products will be subject to a 40% tariff rate.
President Trump also said Vietnam will further open its market to imports of U.S. products. This presumably includes U.S. pork and pork variety meat, which currently face formidable obstacles in Vietnam.
In mid-2022, Vietnam temporarily reduced its most favored nation tariff rate on frozen pork from 15% to 10%, providing modest relief for U.S. pork. But even with this reduction, U.S. pork is still tariffed at a significantly higher rate than most suppliers. Vietnam’s imports from Russia – Vietnam’s largest single-country pork supplier – are duty-free, while pork from Canada and most other Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership countries also enters Vietnam at zero duty. Frozen pork from the European Union is currently tariffed at 3.7% and will be phased to zero by 2027. U.S. pork variety meat faces a tariff of 8%, compared to zero for CPTPP suppliers and Russia, and just 3.2% for variety meat from the EU.
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