Vietnam vs China for manufacturing

Is Vietnam replacing China as a US supplier?

For US imports, partly; for manufacturing capacity, no. Vietnam, the Southeast Asian country whose exports to the US grew faster between 2017 and 2025 than those of Mexico or India, raised its share of US goods imports from 2.0% in 2017 to 5.7% in 2025, while China's share fell from 21.6% to 9.0%. The comparison below uses US Census Bureau goods-import data (nominal, Census basis, not seasonally adjusted); the shares are calculated by the Editorial Desk from the Census world total.

In 2025 alone, US imports from Vietnam rose about 42% while imports from China fell about 30% (Census, Trade in Goods with Vietnam). For January through August 2026, the two countries were almost level. That is a partial year, unadjusted for seasonality, and should not be extrapolated into a claim that Vietnam has overtaken China. What the series does show is that the US-bound trade flow has moved quickly; it does not show that the factories, suppliers and materials behind that flow have moved with it.

The scale gap: manufacturing value added

Manufacturing value added (MVA — the value a country's factories add to their inputs, net of the materials and components they buy) is the standard measure of how much manufacturing a country actually does. On the World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI), Vietnam's 2025 MVA was US$126.2 billion in current dollars. China's was US$4,822.7 billion. China's manufacturing base is therefore about 38 times larger, by the Editorial Desk's calculation from the WDI figures. Both values are in current US dollars, so exchange rates affect them, and the 2025 figures may be revised.

Vietnam's base is growing quickly from a small starting point: its MVA was US$63.7 billion in 2017, so it roughly doubled in eight years. Foreign investment is the main engine. Vietnam's National Statistics Office reported about US$27.62 billion of disbursed foreign direct investment in 2025, up about 9%, of which US$22.88 billion went to manufacturing and processing, with registered investment of US$38.42 billion. Those figures come from a secondary report of the official data (Xinhua and VnEconomy, 6 January 2026); the primary release was not reviewed for this page.

The practical consequence is breadth. A buyer moving a single product line to Vietnam can usually find assembly capacity. A buyer moving a category that depends on dozens of component suppliers, toolmakers and material producers will find that many of them are still in China.

Where Vietnam has overtaken China, by category

Vietnam's gains are concentrated in electronics assembly, apparel, footwear and furniture. In three of the four categories below, Vietnam supplied a larger share of 2025 US imports than China did. In toys, China still dominates. The shares are from US-reported data in the UN Comtrade database; Comtrade values are on a CIF basis (cost, insurance and freight included), so they differ slightly from Census customs values, and 2025 data may be revised.

Two cautions apply. For apparel, the US government's OTEXA series puts China's 2025 share at 13.7% rather than 14.6%, because the product definitions differ; use one series consistently. For furniture, HS chapter 94 also includes lighting and prefabricated buildings.

Electronics is the largest single shift by value. According to Kearney's 2026 Reshoring Index, US imports of computer and electronics products from Vietnam rose by US$40 billion, or 62%, in 2025. Kearney is a consultancy and its index is not official statistics, but the direction matches the Census totals.

Chinese inputs inside Vietnamese products

Vietnam's export growth runs partly on Chinese materials and equipment. The US International Trade Commission (USITC Publication 5543) found that in 2023 China supplied almost two-thirds, about US$9.6 billion, of Vietnam's fabric imports. China's own customs data show the same pattern in tooling: in 2025 Vietnam was the largest destination for Chinese exports of injection and compression molds for rubber or plastics (HS 848071), at US$632 million, ahead of the United States at US$473 million (UN Comtrade, China-reported).

In other words, a garment cut and sewn in Vietnam may use Chinese fabric, and a plastic part molded in Vietnam may come out of a Chinese-built mold. The overall share of Chinese value added in Vietnam's exports has not been established here; the OECD Trade in Value Added data that would measure it were not retrieved. What can be said is that "moving to Vietnam" often moves the last stages of production while the upstream supply chain stays in China. That has two consequences for an importer: lead times still depend on Chinese suppliers, and customs origin and forced-labor rules may still reach Chinese content.

Country of origin and transshipment

Under US customs law, the country of origin for duty purposes is the country where the article was made or last substantially transformed — processed into a new and different article with a distinct name, character or use (19 CFR 134.1(b)). It is not the country where the goods were packed, labeled or shipped. Simple assembly, packaging, labeling or minor finishing in Vietnam of Chinese components generally does not change origin from China, though each case turns on its facts and CBP rules on them individually. An importer can request a binding origin ruling under 19 CFR Part 177 before committing to a production plan.

Enforcement is real and is aimed at third countries as well as China. CBP's Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) process investigates evasion of antidumping and countervailing duties through transshipment and misdeclared origin. Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a compilation of CBP data through August 2026 counts 6,963 stopped shipments of Vietnamese origin, the second-largest origin in that compilation after China at 23,670. That figure was read from a third-party compilation of CBP's dashboard, not from cbp.gov directly, and should be re-verified on CBP's own statistics page. The point it illustrates does not depend on the exact count: UFLPA reaches goods made in part with Xinjiang inputs wherever they were finished.

US tariffs on Vietnamese goods as of October 2026

The tariff gap between Vietnam and China has changed several times since 2025, and each change came under a different legal instrument:

• July 2025: the US announced a trade framework with Vietnam. Press reports described a 20% tariff and a higher rate on "transshipped" goods (CNBC, 2 July 2025). Those tariffs rested on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
• 20 February 2026: the Supreme Court held in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs. IEEPA duty collection stopped on 24 February 2026.
• 24 February to 23 July 2026: a temporary 10% Section 122 surcharge applied to imports from all countries, then expired.
• From 24 July 2026: USTR's Section 301 forced-labor action imposed an additional 12.5% duty on products of China and of Vietnam, and 10% on a group of other economies (USTR notice, dockets USTR-2026-0265 and -0266).

As of October 2026, then, Vietnam and China carry the same 12.5% forced-labor Section 301 layer. The difference is what sits underneath. Chinese-origin goods also carry the 2018 China Section 301 list duties (25% for Lists 1–3, 7.5% for List 4A) and any four-year-review increases, and the HTSUS notes make the forced-labor duty cumulative with them. Vietnamese-origin goods do not carry those China-specific lists. Section 232 duties on steel, aluminum, autos and other named products apply regardless of origin, and goods under Section 232 are exempt from the forced-labor layer.

The research behind this page relied on the pre-publication text of the USTR notice; its annex exceptions were not reviewed line by line, and the status of any US–Vietnam reciprocal agreement as of October 2026 was not confirmed. The duty on a specific product depends on its HTS classification and origin, and a licensed customs broker should confirm both before costing an order.

Intellectual property and enforcement signals

USTR's 2026 Special 301 Report, dated April 2026, identified Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country — the report's most serious designation — while China remained on the Priority Watch List. CBP's intellectual property seizure statistics for fiscal year 2025 point the same way: Vietnam was the second-largest origin of seized items by quantity, at 22,910,860 items, behind China at 39,874,536 and ahead of Hong Kong at 12,168,578. CBP's own disclaimer states that the seizure figures are not official trade statistics, and the copy reviewed for this page was an archived version of the CBP PDF, because cbp.gov denied automated access.

For a brand owner, the signal is that relocating production does not relocate IP risk away. Registering trademarks, controlling molds and artwork, and contracting for confidentiality apply in Vietnam as they do in China.

Common mistakes when comparing Vietnam and China

• Treating Vietnam as a like-for-like replacement. Its manufacturing base is about one-thirty-eighth of China's (WDI 2025), and many of its inputs come from China.
• Assuming "Made in Vietnam" settles customs origin. Substantial transformation decides origin; the label and the port of export do not.
• Comparing tariff headlines from 2025. The 20% framework rate and the IEEPA transshipment penalty were IEEPA instruments. Since the February 2026 ruling, the relevant layers are Section 301, Section 232 and any AD/CVD order.
• Assuming Vietnam is cheaper. No comparable official wage or labor-cost series for the two countries was available for this page. China's National Bureau of Statistics reports 2025 average manufacturing wages of 113,594 yuan in urban non-private units and 76,055 yuan in urban private units, but there is no matching Vietnamese figure here to set against it.
• Ignoring forced-labor exposure in third countries. Cotton, polysilicon and other inputs traced to Xinjiang trigger UFLPA detentions whether the final product ships from China or Vietnam.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau — Trade in Goods with Vietnam (country page) (2026, HTML-official)
• U.S. Census Bureau — Trade in Goods with China (country page) and Trade in Goods with World (2026, HTML-official)
• World Bank — World Development Indicators: NV.IND.MANF.CD (2026, HTML-official)
• Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — Notice of Actions in Section 301 Investigations of Acts, Policies, and Practices of Various Economies Rela… (2026, PDF)
• U.S. International Trade Commission — USITC Pub. 5543, Cambodia profile, n. 672 (citing Government of Cambodia, Industrial Transformation Map, March… (2024, PDF)
• Office of the United States Trade Representative — 2026 Special 301 Report (citing OECD-EUIPO studies) (2026, PDF)
• Kearney — 2026 Reshoring Index (sidebar: How tariffs redirected sourcing away from China), p.5 (2026, PDF)
• ecfr.gov/current/title-19/chapter-I/part-134