 "France's President Emmanuel Macron and Vietnam's President Luong Cuong shake hands during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi. (Photo: Reuters)")
France has a flurry of new trade deals with Vietnam, as Trump tariffs threaten the world economy. During his first leg of his Southeast Asia tour, which started with a visit to Vietnam, French President Emmanuel Macron signed over 30 agreements worth $10 billion, including a major Airbus deal for 20 aircraft.
Macron’s first formal visit to Vietnam, the first by a French president in nearly a decade, follows US President Donald Trump’s threats on Friday to impose 50 per cent duties on European Union goods from June 1, fuelling tensions with the 27-country bloc, though he later delayed that deadline to July 9.
During a joint press conference with his Vietnamese counterpart, Luong Cuong, in Hanoi, Macron stressed the importance of a rule-based order “at a time of both great imbalance and a return to power-driven rhetoric”.
What did the deals cover?
Deals covered the purchase of 20 Airbus planes, cooperation on nuclear energy, defence, rail and maritime transport, Airbus earth-observation satellites and Sanofi vaccines, a list of documents seen by Reuters showed, confirming an earlier report.
The deal with European planemaker Airbus for Vietnam’s low-cost airline VietJet to buy 20 A330neo wide-body aircraft follows last year’s agreement for 20 of the jets.
The two countries also signed deals intended towards a defence push, with Cuong saying that the defence partnership involved “sharing of information on strategic matters” and stronger cooperation in the defence industry, cybersecurity and anti-terrorism.
Meanwhile, Macron reiterated France’s support of freedom of navigation, an issue dear to Vietnam as it often clashes with Beijing over contested boundaries in the South China Sea.
EU concerns over Vietnam’s concessions to US
At the same time, the European Union has been on the edge since Vietnam announced plans to cut tariffs on several products as the country tries to avoid being hit with US tariffs because of its large bilateral trade surplus.
Under the new plans revealed late on Tuesday, the tariff on American liquefied natural gas will be cut to 2 per cent from 5 per cent, on automobiles to 32 per cent from a range of 45 per cent to 64 per cent, and on ethanol to 5 per cent from 10 per cent, the head of the Finance Ministry’s tax policy department Nguyen Quoc Hung said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.
The tariff cuts are aimed at “improving trade balances with (Vietnam)’s trade partners,” Hung said, adding that while the US and Vietnam had a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the countries had not signed a free-trade agreement.
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View AllWith inputs from agencies