Made in Vietnam: Hanoi is taken into account of false products as American tariffs advance

Since the United States accused Vietnam of being a center of counterfeit products, Tran Le Chi has found increasingly difficult to locate its fake favorite Chanel shirts, Gucci sunglasses and Louis Vuitton bags.

While the Vietnam government tries to remove the 46 percent threatened tariff of President Donald Trump, has launched an offensive against false products, partly to show the capacity to respond to US concerns.

Now there are streets full of closed stores in Hanoi and ranks of closed stalls at the Saigon Square shopping center, an important clothing market in the city of Ho Chi Minh, the type of places that Chi used to go to buy its last team.

“Clothes helps me look fashionable,” Chi told AFP. “Why would I mind whether they are false or not?”

Chi, an betting agent for an illegal game known as Lo-de, where the traigators predict the last two lottery numbers of the standard daily raffle, said he had never paid more than $ 40 per “designer” article.

“Only super rich people can pay the real ones,” he added. “They are not for people like us.”

Communist Vietnam is a manufacturing power that produces clothes and footwear for international brands, with the United States its number one export market in the first five months of 2025.

But it also has a prosperous market of counterfeit products.

In a report published by the US trade representative. In January, the Saigon Square shopping center was marked as an important market for the sale of false luxury items that include bags, wallets, jewelry and watches.

The report pointed out government efforts to eliminate trade, but said that “the low sanctions have had little deterrent effect” and “counterfeit products remain unbridled.”

The owner of the Hoa store, a pseudonym to protect his identity, said that almost all the false products of Nike, Lacoste and North Face that sells in his store in the old Hanoi neighborhood are from China, but labeled with a label “made in Vietnam” so that they look authentic.

She insists that all her clients know what they are getting.

“My customers are those who can't pay authentic products,” said Hoa. “I have never cheated anyone.”

Hanoi and Washington are in the heart of commercial conversations, with Vietnam doing everything possible to avoid the 46 percent rate crusher that could go into force in early July.

The Vietnam Ministry of Commerce ordered the authorities in April to harden control over the origin of the goods after the Trump administration accused the country of facilitating Chinese exports to the United States and allowing Beijing to loot tariffs.

The Ministry of Public Security also said that there would be a three -month repression, until mid -August, in counterfeit products.

Nguyen Thanh Nam, deputy director of the internal market surveillance and development agency, said last five months of the year, more than 7,000 cases of counterfeit products for more than $ 8 million had been discovered.

He added that 1,000 Rolex fake watches of the Saigon Square shopping center had been seized.

The mounds of vitamins, cosmetics and sweets, apparently also falsified, have appeared on waste land outside cities such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Danang, while false electronics, including Marshall speakers and smart watches, have been confiscated.

Police have not specified the origin of the goods, but Vietnam was the largest buyer of Chinese products in Southeast Asia in 2024, with an invoice of $ 161.9 billion.

Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting a member of the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said that although there were other objectives of the impulse, including the improvement of the Vietnam business environment and formalize the retail sector, “the campaign plays a role in Vietnam's strategy to crush the United States.”

“The effort partly reflects Vietnam's intention to show the ability to respond to the concerns of the United States,” he said.

But for Hoa, his livelihood is at stake. His store has been closed for almost two weeks and has no idea how to restart the business.

“I have sold this type of clothing for a decade and I have experienced any problem. Now they take energetic measures, it is difficult to discover how I continue,” he said.