Germany and Vietnam recently expanded their economic ties by signing financial cooperation and partnership pacts. Last year bilateral trade exceeded 5 billion dollars between these two countries and Germany was Vietnam’s largest trade partner in the European Union. These countries are not only looking to increase trade, but also to create welcoming working conditions for businesses in each other's country. This partnership aims to benefit both parties in ways far beyond just trade.
With its close proximity to Canada and Mexico, most United States exporters export to only one market and unsurprisingly this market is usually Canada. However, many smaller companies that work with the U.S. Commercial Service have found other great markets filled many new customers. Some of the best markets with countless opportunities for U.S. companies are Vietnam, India, Indonesia, India, China, Taiwan and Thailand. You can learn more about these markets by watching these videos on India, Indonesia, and Vietnam posted on the Export.gov website. With these videos, you will learn about some of the many sectors in these markets where U.S. companies are competitive. In the videos, you will also be introduced to the top U.S. commercial diplomats in these markets who will help your company evaluate and enter exciting new markets.
Food prices have certainly become a hot topic recently, and so has food quality. With oil spills, nuclear waste scares, and natural disasters constantly threatening the quality of the world’s food supply, businesses have to be more careful with what food they sell. Still the exporting of food seems to continue to increase. Fish exports in particular have seen a huge increase in global demand.
‘China is on the rise’ is a statement that we hear all too often. However, China’s growth does not only appear to be benefiting China alone. Vietnam has been able to use this neighboring country’s growth to benefit its own economy. Vietnam has a lot of appeal for international business and has begun to make a name for itself through China's success.
As globalEDGE has discussed in the previous posts for this month’s blog series, not only are frontier markets growing extremely fast, they also have a lot of systematic risks. These risks can range from extremely prohibitive government regulations to a communist run government that feels it’s appropriate to expropriate private assets when it deems necessary. To transition to a stable growing economy these countries must remove these risks and increase its population’s education and consumption. These will create sustainable investment opportunities and the increase in consumer spending will continue to fuel economic growth.
While Vietnam’s largest export is textiles, seafood is often overlooked as another crucial product to Vietnam’s economic well-being. In June 2009, Vietnam and Japan signed the Vietnam-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, which effectively reduced and eliminated tariffs on a number of Vietnamese goods, one of which was dried seafood. In the past, high prices had deterred other Southeast Asian countries from buying Vietnamese seafood, but the tariff cuts, coupled with overall increased demands, have led to a boom in Vietnamese seafood exports.
The European Union and Vietnam recently announced that they have started free-trade negotiations. This is another step the European Union has taken to secure new markets following signing agreements with South Korea, Peru, and Colombia.