Vietnam Emerging as Manufacturing Powerhouse

From mobile phones to furniture, Vietnam’s export boom shows no signs of losing steam, defying a gloomy outlook at the beginning of the year when President Donald Trump persisted with his trade threats, Yahoo reported. Furniture maker Xuan Hoa Viet Nam Co. is planning for a 20% increase in export orders next year by investing $3 million on equipment to expand production, General Director Le Duy Anh said in an interview. When Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in January, it was seen as a blow to Vietnam, which exports about a fifth of its goods to the world’s largest economy.

Instead, a global trade recovery and Vietnam’s young and low-cost workforce have been magnets for international investors like Nestle, which have opened factories in the country this year.

That’s helping underpin its economy, which expanded 6.81% this year, among the fastest in the world. “We’ve seen Vietnam’s coming of age this decade with its rapid transformation to a manufacturing powerhouse,” said Eugenia Victorino, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group in Singapore.