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Hanoi Buys Indian Missiles, Pours Concrete in the Spratlys
Indian Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed at the Shangri-La Dialogue on May 30 that Hanoi has agreed to buy the BrahMos cruise missile, making it the second foreign buyer after the Philippines. The shore-based version travels at nearly three times the speed of sound and has a range of almost 300 km (about 180 miles), enough to give pause to any naval commander operating near the Vietnamese coast. The confirmation arrived in the same week that satellite imagery analyzed by Radio Free Asia showed Vietnamese construction underway at 27 spots on at least 18 reefs in the Spratlys, with ports, runways, military facilities, and communications arrays going up across the chain. China is Hanoi's number one trading partner, and the two governments have spent recent years talking up warmer ties. Beijing seized the Paracel Islands from South Vietnam in 1974 after a bloody battle and has pushed its claims in the South China Sea ever since.
Read more: Newsweek (Philippines comparison), Eurasia Review (acreage reclaimed)
Hanoi's Wish List Lands on Washington's Desk
Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc gave US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau a pretty specific shopping list during talks in Hanoi on June 10, asking Washington to drop Vietnam from its D1 and D3 export control lists, recognize its market economy status, and pushed for the close of a reciprocal trade deal. Landau, in town for the ASEAN Future Forum 2026, offered the standard warm verbiage about a "strong, independent, resilient and prosperous" partner, and mentioned American interest in critical minerals, aviation, energy and defense alongside trade. Defense Minister Phan Van Giang, who also met Landau, said bilateral defense ties were one of the "most effective and practical" areas of engagement. What Hanoi got back was mostly affirmation that Trump "highly appreciated" To Lam's February trip to Washington.
Read more: VietnamNet
Foxconn Wants Its Watts Green AND Guaranteed
Foxconn and Brookfield Asset Management released a plan on June 9 to build up to 1 gigawatt of utility-scale wind, solar, and battery capacity to power Foxconn's Vietnam factories and supplier network, underpinned by a long-term power purchase agreement and funded through Brookfield's Catalytic Transition Fund. Before war in the Middle East upended energy supply lines, Vietnam was buying nearly four-fifths of its oil from Kuwait, a dependency that has been surely been focusing minds in both Hanoi and Taipei. Foxconn chief investment officer James Tu said the deal was a good way to get "stable and cost-effective power" for the company's regional growth more than it was a green-washing exercise. The buildout will come as Vietnam's direct PPA framework continues to evolve. The National Assembly is at this moment rewriting it to try and better court foreign investors. Brookfield manages more than $1 trillion in assets and runs one of the world's largest renewable energy portfolios of hydro, wind, solar, and storage on five continents.
Read more: Vietnam Investment Review (Daniel Cheng), Vietnam News (Vietnam legislative efforts), Semafor (Kuwait oil dependency), Focustaiwan TW (James Tu), Asian Power (direct PPA framework)
LG Innotek Bets Big on Hai Phong Substrates
LG Innotek signed an MoU with Hai Phong on June 4 to build its first semiconductor substrate plant outside South Korea in what will be a 330,000 sqm facility. Construction starts next month, completion is expected by May 2027. The plant will produce RF-SiP, FC-CSP, and FC-BGA substrates, the advanced packaging components that sit between raw chip fabrication and finished devices, and that every AI server rack and 5G handset currently needs more of. The Gumi factory already running in Korea is running near full capacity. CEO Moon Hyuk-soo wants the packaging solutions unit raking in more than 3 trillion KRW by 2030.
Read more: Vietnam News (Gumi reinvestment), Vietnam Insiders (6G demand)
China Eats What Washington Won't
Vietnamese seafood shipments to China and Hong Kong rose 40.5% to $1.2 billion in the first five months of 2026, more than offsetting a 10% slide in US-bound exports to $689 million. Shrimp led the pack globally at $1.9 billion in all markets, which is about 40% of all seafood shipments. The industry is already raising the flag about raw material shortages and stricter Chinese food safety rules as reasons the second half may not keep up.
Read more: VnExpress
Gold Bugs Get Squashed
Retail investors who rode bullion to its peak are nursing losses of more than 27% since early March, with the Saigon Jewelry Company bar price settling at VND138.3 million per tael on Wednesday after a single-day drop of 3.82%. The local premium that once made Vietnamese gold a juicy arb play has collapsed to roughly VND4 million per tael, down from nearly VND12 million recently, as sellers cashed out over fears that new supply would push prices lower still. Precious metal and gemstone imports rose 284% year-on-year, the fastest growth of any major import category, and the Vietnam Gold Traders Association is lobbying for a 50-ton yearly tariff-free import quota, saying the ask is needed to support more jewelry exports.
Read more: VnExpress (Wednesday price drop), VnExpress (local-global premium), VnExpress (rate hike pressure), VnExpress (50-ton import quota)
A Single Stock to Rule Them All
The VN-Index saw an all-time high of 1,933 points in May, and nearly two-thirds of actively managed funds still couldn't keep up. Eighteen closed out the first five months in the red. The rally leaned heavily on Vingroup-connected names, even as the VN30, tracking the market's biggest stocks, fell 1.3% in May and is down 1.7% so far for the year. Dragon Capital's DCDS and DCDE both held VIC and VHM and still lost 6.5% and 6.1% respectively, dragged down partly by Mobile World, which fell more than 9% through the month of May. Even the year's top fund, VNDAF, watched its return shrink from 16.5% to 9.3% in a month after property developer NVL fell more than a quarter in May, after having rocketed 45% in April.
Read more: Vietnam Insiders
Vuong Sells a Million Cars to Himself
VinFast has signed a deal to supply Green SM, the ride-hailing company that is also controlled by Pham Nhat Vuong, with a million electric cars and four million e-motorbikes by 2030, according to its Q1 financials. VinFast showed a loss of more than VND28 trillion in Q1, up from VND17.7 trillion a year earlier, even as Green SM's charter capital has risen from VND3 trillion to VND43 trillion since its 2023 launch. Outside the empire, real customers are hard to come by, though VinFast did sell 58,600 electric cars in Q1, up 61% year-on-year. 8% of the total went to overseas markets.
Read more: VnExpress (Green SM expansion), TechNode Global (charging infrastructure)
Bangkok and Hanoi Pencil In $50 Billion
Thailand and Vietnam set a bilateral trade goal of $50 billion, with a nearer-term waypoint of $25 billion, after Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's June 8 talks in Hanoi on the sidelines of the ASEAN Future Forum. The two are currently in the middle of celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations, and in May they upgraded their relationship to a Complete Strategic Partnership. The bi-national talks included much more than just trade, taking in defense exchanges, joint maritime patrols, a shared "Two Countries, One Destination" tourism pitch, and invitations to Thai defense firms for December's Vietnam International Defense Expo in Hanoi.
Read more: Aa Com TR (summit), Travel and Tour World (tourism visitor counts), VnExpress (defense expo invite), VnEconomy (three connectivity strategy)
Hanoi Stops Promising Workers a Deed
In a noteworthy shift of messaging, Vietnam is retiring the dream of mass homeownership for its workers. At the 14th Vietnam Trade Union Congress on June 5, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh changed the goal from “owning a home” to having "the right to housing." He mentioned long-term affordable rentals near industrial zones as part of his pitch. Housing prices may have made the change inevitable, because costs in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City now run 20 to 30 times average annual income. That’s compared to what’s considered healthy elsewhere of of 5 to 7 time. More than 70 percent of Hanoi's 2.7 million workers already live in rented boarding houses. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor says it’s on track to deliver about 10,700 social housing units by 2030, with 1,722 apartments already under construction in Bac Ninh and the former Ben Tre (now Vinh Long), expected to be finished sometime next year.
Read more: VnEconomy (PM rental commitment), VnEconomy (VGCL timeline), VnEconomy (National Housing Corporation)
Towers Down, Trees Up on the Saigon River
Ho Chi Minh City has put the kibosh on a 2016 plan for more than 3,100 riverfront apartments at the Nha Rong-Khanh Hoi site and broke ground April 29 on a 39.5-hectare public park instead. Sun Group is building it under a build-transfer contract worth VND20 trillion ($760 million), with no state budget money involved. The reversal is remarkable partly because the city currently offers residents about 0.7 sq.m of public park space per person, against its own stated livability benchmark of 8 to 10 (for comparison, Bangkok (no green paradise) manages 3.3). The Nha Rong site is a few hundred meters from the Nguyen Hue walking street, on one of the most coveted land banks in the city.
Read more: VnExpress
That's all for this week, thanks for reading. Your voice matters to us. Feel we're missing something? Have additional sources to suggest? Don't hold back- hit reply and tell us what you think.
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