2025-05-26
3 分钟The Economist. Hi, it's Alice Su.
I co-host Drum Tower, our weekly podcast on China.
Here's an article handpicked from the latest edition of The Economist read out loud.
I thought you might enjoy it.
The first Asian leader to reach Donald Trump by phone after he announced reciprocal tariffs in the Rose Garden on April 2nd was Tho Lam,
the General Secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party.
he offered to eliminate all tariffs on American goods.
Mr Trump praised Mr Lam in a subsequent post on social media.
Mr Trump's tone changed a few days later, however, when Mr Lam welcomed Xi Jinping,
China's leader, to Hanoi for his second state visit in three years.
Mr Trump declared that the pair were meeting to work out how do we screw the United States of America?
Few countries are as caught up in the geopolitics of the moment as Vietnam.
It lies between America and China in many supply chains.
The two countries are its two biggest trading partners.
It is a communist dictatorship like China,
but also spars with China over fishing and mineral rights in the South China Sea.
Under Mr Lam's predecessor Nguyen Phu Trong, who died last year,
Vietnam pursued bamboo diplomacy,
bending but not breaking when bigger powers huff and puff.
Other non-aligned countries have struggled, but Vietnam has emerged mostly unscathed.