Japan and Vietnam yesterday agreed to boost bilateral trade and uphold global rules on the free flow of goods as Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met Vietnamese leaders in Hanoi while both nations engage in talks with Washington to avoid tariffs.
Ishiba’s first trip to Vietnam, and his subsequent visit to the Philippines today, mark the latest high-level East Asian meetings amid escalating global uncertainty triggered by the threat of crippling US tariffs.
“The world economy is becoming more uncertain and the impact on the Southeast Asian region is also becoming apparent,” Ishiba told reporters yesterday after a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Vietnam this month has hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and top South Korean ministers, while Tokyo has held a trilateral meeting with China and South Korea.
The White House earlier this month slapped “bilateral tariffs” of 46 percent on Vietnam and 24 percent on Japan. Those duties were later paused until July as bilateral talks are underway, but a 10 percent levy applies on all imports into the US, which is a major market for both nations.
“We will cooperate to maintain a free and open international order based on the rule of law,” Ishiba said in a joint news conference with Chinh where journalists’ questions were not allowed.
Vietnam is a major assembling hub for Japanese manufacturers, including Honda, Canon and Panasonic, with a total of US$78 billion invested in the Southeast Asian nation by Japanese firms, Vietnamese Ministry of Finance data shows.
Japanese banks also hold strategic stakes in top Vietnamese lenders.
“The two countries agreed to uphold the global order of free trade based on international rules,” Chinh said, after the two leaders signed four cooperation agreements, including on boosting trade in energy transition products, and on research and development on semiconductors.
The contents of the agreements were not disclosed.
Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary To Lam urged Japan to increase its investment in infrastructure projects after he met Ishiba on Sunday, a Vietnamese government’s portal reported.
Japan has been involved in preliminary studies for the construction of a high-speed railway connecting Hanoi to the southern business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, which with an estimated cost of US$67 billion is Vietnam’s most ambitious infrastructure project.
The leaders did not explicitly mention railways among fields of cooperation. Vietnam has said it plans to finance the project largely on its own.
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