As the ongoing U.S.-China trade war threatens to dent exports from the world’s two largest economies, analysts have projected that other countries may see Chinese and American demand diverted their way.
Vietnam — and Southeast Asia as a whole — is one of the places most expected to benefit from trade war-inspired buying. According to one investor, however, the profit so far has been slight.
“It’s a bit early for Vietnam to be benefiting in a big way from trade wars,” Bill Stoops, the chief investment officer of asset management company Dragon Capital, told CNBC on Wednesday.
The Southeast Asian nation has been touted as a possible winner in the U.S.-China trade war because of its low cost of manufacturing. Reports indicate that some companies have begun shifting production out of China to avoid tariffs imposed by America.
Vietnam will likely benefit from those adjusted supply chains for a long time, according to Rob Koepp, network director of the Economist Corporate Network.
“It is now set to be kind of a China 2.0, for various reasons, and yeah, it’s going to be benefiting and that’s going to be long term,” he told CNBC on Thursday.
While firms have likely been limited by the logistical constraints of relocating and building new facilities in Vietnam, the country has begun to see new orders “flooding” into its existing industries that have some capacity for increased production, Stoops said.
“We are already starting to see big orders, big export orders flowing, out of nowhere, into the seafood, and the furniture and the garment industry,” Stoops told CNBC’s Street Signs. “I think this is a harbinger of things to come, as people start to divert business away from China.”
“It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s definitely in the works, and we’re starting to see straws in the wind with all these new export orders,” he added.
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