
Nordics’ NATO Bid Means Short-Term Pain For Long-Term Gain
Finland's and Sweden's joint application for NATO membership entails serious economic changes.
Reshuffling at the top of Vietnam's leadership structure unlikely to lead to policy change.
Vietnam’s National Assembly has named a new president and a new prime minister, developments that analysts say will safeguard the 6.5%-7.0% annual growth rates laid out in the country’s Five-Year Plan and cement Vietnam’s position as one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies. The economy expanded a noteworthy 4.5% year-on-year in the first quarter and could grow by 10% year-on-year this year, according to Capital Economics.
The April announcement follows January’s decision by Vietnam’s Communist Party to re-elect Nguyen Phu Trong as general secretary for a rare third term. Nguyen's post is widely considered primus inter pares (first among equals) among Vietnam’s “four pillars” of leadership, which also include a largely ceremonial president, a governing prime minister and chair of the National Assembly.
The outgoing prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, will become the next president, and Pham Minh Chinh, a senior communist party apparatchik, will succeed Phuc as prime minister. Pham has held several top positions in Vietnam’s powerful Ministry of Public Security; under his leadership, Vietnam’s anti-corruption crackdown, known as “blazing furnace,” is likely to receive renewed impetus.
Vietnam emerged almost unscathed from the Covid-19 pandemic and benefited from a rise in US-China trade tensions that precipitated a flurry of reshoring to other Asian countries. By the end of 2020, just 1,465 cumulative Covid-19 cases and 0.4 deaths per million inhabitants had been reported in Vietnam, the UK medical journal The Lancet reported.
Vietnam absorbed almost half of the $31 billion in US imports whose production was shifted from China to other Asian countries in 2019, the Kearney Reshoring Index estimates. Vietnam is now the world’s second-largest exporter of mobile phones and Taiwan’s Foxconn’s is reportedly earmarking $270 million to expand iPad production in Vietnam.
Part of Vietnam’s allure to investors include its low trade barriers and numerous free-trade agreements. The country is a founding member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and recently struck a free-trade deal with the European Union. Furthermore, the US Treasury has removed Vietnam from its list of currency manipulators.