by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam FDI, Trade & Global Expansion
⚡ TL;DRVietnam has absorbed on the order of $500 billion in registered foreign investment since 1988 and sent out barely a twentieth of that. The companies that did go abroad form a short and revealing list: Viettel, the army-owned telecom that built networks in ten...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam FDI, Trade & Global Expansion
⚡ TL;DRRoughly a third of the value of Vietnam’s exports to the United States is estimated to originate in China, arriving as components, fabric, kits and sub-assemblies that Vietnamese factories turn into finished goods. Washington calls the worst of this...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam FDI, Trade & Global Expansion
⚡ TL;DRVietnam has signed sixteen free trade agreements in three decades, more than any economy of comparable size, and the two that changed its exports most are the CPTPP, in force from January 2019, and the EVFTA with the European Union, in force from August 2020....
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam FDI, Trade & Global Expansion
⚡ TL;DROn 2 April 2025 the United States announced a 46 percent “reciprocal” tariff on Vietnam, the highest rate imposed on any major trading partner and a direct threat to an economy that sends close to 30 percent of its exports to America. Hanoi...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam FDI, Trade & Global Expansion
⚡ TL;DRVietnam became the default “plus one” of China Plus One because it offered the closest thing to a Chinese factory outside China: cheap, disciplined labour a day’s drive from Shenzhen, a government that sells industrial land by the hectare, and...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 13, 2026 | Startup, Vietnam Company Stories, Vietnam Founders & Conglomerates
⚡ TL;DRVietnam’s economy is run by three groups that rarely appear on the same chart: state enterprises that control energy, telecoms and the big banks; private conglomerates that dominate property, cars, retail and software; and foreign investors that produce...
