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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

It could backfire if China sees these smaller countries as a threat and moves to block them. Vietnam borders with China, no doubt they are as dependent on China as, say, Canada is with the US. I could see China saying "hey if you trade with the US, we're putting 20% on your exports to China"

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Wouldn't happen. The Vietnamese hate the Chinese more than the Chinese hate the US. It's more likely that the US eventually extends tariffs to other SE Asian countries.

That said, I think the real story is companies preemptively shifting manufacturing out of SE Asia entirely in order to get ahead of the next wave of offshoring.

The fact that they hate each other lends even more credence to my theory - it’s that much easier to put tariffs on them. 25% of their imports and 14% of their exports are with China [1], China could definitely hurt Vietnam if they become too close with the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Vietnam

China would rather not play with fire here, the Vietnamese night invite the USA to establish a naval base or something if pushed too far, especially considering the current South China Sea contests.

(Ironically a reversal of USA support for China during the sino Vietnam war)

I wonder what are the possibilities of that happening? It is sort of the indicator of how much Vietnamese hate China, by settling with US.

It's unlikely. Chinese intervention in Korea and Vietnam was mainly about keeping US troops off of the Chinese boarder. China's invasion of Vietnam was also partially about limiting Soviet influence in that country.

China and Vietnam historically haven't gotten along well anyway.

And I'm not so sure how many Asian nations would go along with that whole situation. Would be a lot of doubling down there by China... and when / if THEY want to offshore some things, where do they go?

My understanding is that China is offshoring a lot of stuff to Africa. Wages are still lower there.

China has been offshoring to SE since years ago too.

Africa like the poster above mentioned.

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