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President Trump announces trade deal with Vietnam as major tariff deadline looms

President Donald Trump said he’s secured a trade deal with Vietnam in what would be just the second agreement Trump has made with another country ahead of a critical July 9 deadline when U.S. tariffs could skyrocket.

Full details of the deal were not immediately clear, though Trump said the U.S. will levy 20% tariffs on imports from communist-controlled Vietnam and a 40% tariff on any transshipping of goods.

“In return, Vietnam will do something that they have never done before, give the United States of America TOTAL ACCESS to their Markets for Trade,” Trump said in a July 2 post on Truth Social announcing the deal.

“In other words, they will ‘OPEN THEIR MARKET TO THE UNITED STATES,’ meaning that, we will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at ZERO Tariff,” the president added.

Trump announced the deal after speaking with To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Vietnamese state media said the U.S. and Vietnam reached an agreement on a joint statement for a “reciprocal, fair and balanced” trade deal.

During Trump’s phone call with Lam, the Vietnamese leader asked the U.S. to recognize Vietnam as a market economy and remove restrictions on the exports of hi-tech products to Vietnam, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Companies are currently paying a 10% universal U.S. tariff that Trump imposed on imports from Vietnam and some 180 other nations.

However, significantly larger reciprocal tariffs that Trump initially imposed in early April ‒ but soon after paused for 90 days amid market turbulence ‒ are set to go back into effect July 9. Trump could choose to extend the pause, but he’s said he’s not interested in that.

“No, I’m not,” Trump told reporters July 1 when asked whether he plans to lengthen the pause. “I’m not thinking about the pause. I’ll be writing letters to a lot of countries. And I think you’re just starting to understand the process.”

When the Trump administration delayed the sweeping reciprocal tariffs to allow negotiations with other nations to continue, the White House economic team predicted deals would come at breakneck speed.

“We’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days. It’s possible,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said at the time.

But the administration has struggled to make progress on that pledge.

Trump and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keri Starmer in May reached the first trade deal since Trump imposed the new tariffs ‒ but no others have followed.

In June, Trump announced the framework of a trade deal with China in which the U.S. would collect 55% tariffs on Chinese imports and China would collect 10% on U.S. imports. A month earlier, Trump and China agreed to slash triple-digit tariffs imposed on the other as the two parties continued talks.

The Trump administration had previously pointed to Japan as another opportunity to secure a trade deal. But Trump on Tuesday said a U.S.-Japan deal is unlikely.

“I doubt it with Japan ‒ they’re very tough. You have to understand, they’re spoiled,” Trump told reporters.

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