The surprise winner in the U.S.-China tech war? Vietnam’s chip industry

U.S. President Donald Trump’s onslaught of tariffs has given Vietnam an opportunity to stake its claim in the global semiconductor chip race.

Vietnamese companies that manufacture chip components — such as circuit boards and wafers — have had a surge in demand as clients place orders before the tariffs kick in and Washington steps up pressure to reduce its reliance on Chinese products.

Fab-9, which manufactures circuit boards for chips at a facility in Ho Chi Minh City, saw a 20% increase in orders the week after Trump threatened China with a 145% tariff hike in April, the company’s president, Bert Arucan, told Rest of World.

“We’ve become very busy,” Arucan said during a meeting in May. “We conference all over the world. Yesterday we conferenced with Italy, and we presented our product, and they don’t believe that we do this in Vietnam.”

“This is a huge opportunity for us to break into the [semiconductor] supply chain,” Phuc Le, director of Da Nang Semiconductor and AI Center, a government-run institution to boost Vietnam’s chipmaking and artificial intelligence capabilities, told Rest of World. “In the long run, this is necessary because we need to take ownership of the supply chain. We can’t just import components for assembly.”  

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