Are Those Tennis Shoes Made In Vietnam?

The answer is - sort of, but yes.

So, I was sitting in a business office today talking to a Vietnamese woman who asked me what I did. I told her I wrote books, some on China, and she went completely out of character for a few minutes about how the Chinese were “buying up her country” and taking jobs that rightly belonged to her family. There were “economic zones up and down the coast” made possible by the “greasing of palms” of a few high level officials in the capital. She said if you look at the map it is mostly red along the coastal areas and Vietnamese were not even allowed to go into those areas. She said the Chinese came and went as they wished and did not require a passports to get in. She was really hot about this.

A little Internet examination showed exactly what she was talking about, and made me think about those Vietnamese tennis shoes I bought. They might well have been made in a place where there were no Vietnamese at all, and the trade deficit might be worse than we think.

It seems that more than this woman are upset.  Over 100 protesters were arrested over this same thing in June of this year.  China registered a complaint with Vietnam, pointing no doubt at those palms that were greased.  We paid you, now take care of this.  People don't protest in Vietnam very often so they must have been equally upset by this.

The press has little to no coverage of the China methodology of starting economic zones in other countries, then populating them with Chinese who get to use them so they can call their steel and trade goods "Made in...."  where ever.  Very cute, but China is not the only ones doing it.  Mexico has managed to put together trade agreements for a substantial part of Latin America - where China is rapidly making inroads.  Mexico also held Chinese aluminum for transhipment as Mexican origin aluminum.  The US actually considered rewriting NAFTA way before this administration got around to doing it, mostly because Mexico was using these zones to work around it.  Is anyone playing by the rules in trade, or are there no rules?