Biden’s Hanoi trip buttressed by trade

U.S. President Joe Biden touches down in Hanoi on Sunday on his way home from the Group of 20 Summit in New Delhi, with the United States and Vietnam expected to announce a formal upgrade in ties.

In making the trip, Biden will become the first U.S. president to make a dedicated state visit to the Southeast Asian country since Barack Obama’s high-profile visit in May 2016, when he famously dined at a small noodle shop in Hanoi with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.

While Biden’s visit might take place with less fanfare, it will be viewed as no less vital by Vietnam’s leaders amid Beijing’s increasingly assertive “nine-dash line” claims to the South China Sea.

The fact Biden “chose to visit Hanoi while skipping the ASEAN Summit,” would be viewed by Vietnam’s leaders as evidence of U.S. commitments to the country, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in Vietnam studies at Singapore’s ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

“This visit coincides with China’s harassment of regional claimant states in the South China Sea, including Vietnam and the Philippines, which many in Vietnam will interpret as a gesture of support from Washington for these countries,” Giang told Radio Free Asia.

But the economic element of the trip can’t be ignored, Giang said.

“China is just one factor under consideration,” he said, with Biden’s visit also seen by Hanoi as enhancing “Vietnam’s role in the U.S. ‘de-risking’ strategy,” which seeks to diversify America’s supply chains toward friendlier countries in a practice known as “friendshoring.”

Upgrade in ties

The most tangible result of Biden’s trip is an expected upgrade of relations. The United States is currently ranked in the lowest tier of partners in Vietnam’s diplomatic system, a “comprehensive” partner, which was unveiled under then-President Barack Obama in July 2013.

Hanoi keeps a hierarchy of relations, with 13 “comprehensive partnerships,” 13 “strategic partnerships” and just four “comprehensive strategic partnerships” – Russia, China, India and South Korea. 

“It seems an open secret that they will announce at least an elevation to a ‘strategic partnership,’” said Gregory Poling, the director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “and there’s a lot of rumors that they may well skip that altogether and go right to ‘comprehensive strategic partnership.’”

Poling said that may sound “like word soup to those of us in the U.S.” But for Vietnam, “a communist state with a pretty rigid kind of Leninist hierarchy of diplomatic relations,” he said, “this stuff actually matters.”

Yet the shift is not only about Hanoi and Washington’s concerns about Beijing’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

It’s being driven as much by the “slowing of global economic growth plus China’s economic difficulties,” said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert and emeritus professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra, with Hanoi, too, looking for more trade opportunities.

“Vietnam will be at pains to mollify China that it is not joining an anti-China coalition,” Thayer said, with any upgrade ultimately not changing too much in the substance of the bilateral relationship.

“What sets these three tiers apart is the seniority of members on the bilateral coordinating mechanisms and the frequency of meetings,” he said. “Generally, high-level officials from strategic partners gain access to Vietnam’s ‘four pillars’ of leadership: party general secretary, prime minister, state president and chairman of the National Assembly.”

It’s the economy

Vietnam has been one of the main beneficiaries of American efforts to ease supply-chain reliance on China in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid fears Beijing could weaponize a reliance on it for key goods.

Nearly half a century after the Vietnam War, the country of 97 million people is now the 7th largest source of imports into the United States – behind only Mexico, Canada, China, Germany, Japan and South Korea – according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. 

So far this year, the department of commerce figures say, Vietnam has already sold $62.8 billion of goods to the United States, which is now its largest export market, according to data from the World Bank.

“Nobody’s benefited more from the China plus-one strategy of companies seeking to diversify supply chains more than Vietnam,” said Poling of CSIS. He added that “the Philippines and Vietnam are likely to have the fastest growth in the region this year and next.”

Diversifying U.S. supply chains to friendly countries like Vietnam has also become an explicit aim of the Biden administration, with Trade Representative Katherine Tai visiting the country in February and Secretary of State Antony Blinken also making the trip in April.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited Hanoi in July and said in a speech that Vietnam is “a key partner” in the U.S. “friendshoring” strategy, which she said aims at “diversifying our supply chains among many trusted partners like Vietnam to mitigate against global shocks.”

For Vietnam’s leaders, the economic upshots of closer ties with the United States alone make upgrading ties worth it, said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii and an expert on Vietnam, China and the South China Sea.

“Many Vietnamese understand that their country needs a closer relationship with the U.S. to boost its security and prosperity,” said Vuving, but “an elevated relationship with the U.S. would give Vietnam more than just a better counterweight to China.” 

“Many in the Vietnamese leadership hope that it will give Vietnam more U.S. support for Vietnam’s economic development,” he said. “This upgrade signals a substantial raise, not just a symbolic shift.” (RFA)