U.S. customs authorities recently carried out on-site inspections of China-affiliated factories in Vietnam, according to reports. The move aims to check whether Chinese-made products are being rerouted for export and whether there is potential intellectual property (IP) infringement, and some say the United States could further raise trade pressure on Vietnam.
According to Bloomberg on the 28th local time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently investigated sources of raw material supplies, production processes, and related documents at China-affiliated factories in Vietnam.
CBP was said to have focused on how much value U.S.-bound products actually added in Vietnam and whether there were software (SW) intellectual property infringements.
Sources said no decisive evidence was secured in this probe related to so-called "label swapping" rerouted exports, in which Chinese-made products pass through Vietnam and are exported to the United States with their country of origin changed only to "Vietnam." Still, concerns are being raised that the United States may be seeking grounds to impose additional tariffs on Vietnam.
The United States has consistently taken issue with illegal transshipment in which Chinese-made products undergo only simple processing or packaging and then enter the U.S. market with their origin changed to "made in Vietnam." Earlier this month, Jamieson Greer of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) also said, "There are illegal shipments that send Chinese-made products to Vietnam and put a 'Vietnamese' sticker on them."
Bloomberg reported that U.S. wariness has grown as global corporations shifted production bases from China to Vietnam after the Trump administration imposed high tariffs on Chinese products, with Chinese companies said to be using Vietnam as a hub for rerouted exports.
The probe came as the United States and Vietnam are holding follow-up negotiations on a trade agreement. The two countries agreed on the basic framework of a trade deal in Oct. last year, but talks are reportedly struggling over differences concerning rerouted exports of Chinese products and non-tariff barriers.
The United States has also been ramping up trade pressure on Vietnam recently. On the 23rd, the Trump administration introduced a 10%–12.5% "forced labor tariff" on 60 countries worldwide and applied a 12.5% tariff rate to Vietnam.
In response, Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, "This (tariff) decision does not fully reflect Vietnam's efforts to prevent, reduce, and eradicate forced labor, in particular the reality that includes banning the import of products produced using forced labor."
The Vietnamese government is also tightening enforcement in response to U.S. concerns. The government led by To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and state president, has been expanding crackdowns on rerouted exports and intellectual property infringement, including the recent seizure of 50,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike sneakers.
Vietnamese authorities said in a report of more than 3,500 pages submitted to the Office of the United States Trade Representative in April that they detected and handled about 20,000 intellectual property infringement cases from 2021 to 2025.