Ho Chi Minh City (or “Saigon” as many of the locals still call it) has its own rhythms. Walkable in a way that doesn’t exist stateside, an American can stroll for hours in the oppressive afternoon heat. One might make it only two or three blocks at a time, drawn in to a local bar to punctuate each short jaunt with an ice-cold beer that can be had for the equivalent of a fistful of pennies.
The non-suicidal Westerner will necessarily get around mostly on foot. Vietnam is worth visiting for the traffic alone. The streets buzz day and night with the whine of little 100cc and 125cc motorcycles. I have my motorcycle license endorsement, and I rode bikes – mainly big, American-made cruisers – for a decade. I wouldn’t dare to enter the stream of traffic in Saigon on a motorcycle.
As a pedestrian, the American style of street-crossing (to wait for the directions of a traffic light or to pause until a sufficient gap in the traffic presents itself) is a nonoption. This would lead to entire lives lived on street corners. Instead, you start walking — never dashing, never being indecisive, always at a constant, confident pace — and the people on motorbikes deftly swerve around you.
You marvel at the ingenuity of what gets transported on motorcycles that a single average-sized American would struggle to fit onto. A family of four is de rigueur. Once I saw a man speed by with at least half a dozen 50-gallon drums lashed together and impossibly balanced above him.
I witnessed a single traffic accident. The drivers involved shouted and gesticulated wildly at one another for a minute, as their cohorts continued to swarm around them, then each picked up his motorbike and continued on.
Four-wheeled vehicles are not unheard of in Vietnam. In the city, I crawled along in one slower than I could walk, trapped in a little bubble created for us by all the motorcycles. Out in the Mekong Delta, we took a van on the way to the boats. Though this van did have its own Wi-Fi that seemed to work just fine even well out into the jungle, it was a practical, utilitarian affair, far from the luxuriant family minivans with built-in touchscreens that we are used to in the United States.
Individual tastes differ, of course, but I think it’s fair to say that the Vietnamese generally value practicality, affordability, and suitability for the existing traffic culture when it comes to their vehicles. It is an absurd fantasy to think that Vietnam is going to start importing, in large numbers, huge, expensive, gas-guzzling American-made SUVs.
In announcing a new trade deal with Vietnam, President Donald Trump said, “It is my opinion that the SUV or, as it is sometimes referred to, Large Engine Vehicle, which does so well in the United States, will be a wonderful addition to the various product lines within Vietnam.” Never going to happen.
Even with no trade barriers to selling our big, dumb SUVs in Vietnam, which is what Trump is claiming his trade deal will accomplish (though we have yet to see any details), the U.S. is not going to move a lot of SUVs there. You’ll find somewhat different figures depending on the source, but the equivalent of $697 per month seems to be a pretty high-end estimate of the average salary in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the average price of a new vehicle in the U.S. stands at about $48,000. You can do the math on that.
Trump says that although Vietnam will be able to import U.S. goods with a 0% tariff, American importers will pay a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods (we import far more from Vietnam than we export to it). There will also be a 40% levy on shipments from third countries that are routed through Vietnam (Trump added no details about how the levy on trans-shipments would be implemented and enforced).
President Trump’s new trade deal will not lead to a bonanza of American SUV sales to people who don’t want them and can’t afford them. The Vietnamese are already building better and far cheaper vehicles on their own.
In the off chance that I’m wrong, though, get there before America’s bigger-is-better vehicular lunacy ruins Vietnamese traffic culture. What they have there now is far more elegant, in its own way, than the sprawling mobile status-symbol parade that we have here.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post I’ve Been To Vietnam: Trust Me, No Trade Deal Will Cause The Vietnamese To Buy Countless American SUVs appeared first on Above the Law.
Ho Chi Minh City (or “Saigon” as many of the locals still call it) has its own rhythms. Walkable in a way that doesn’t exist stateside, an American can stroll for hours in the oppressive afternoon heat. One might make it only two or three blocks at a time, drawn in to a local bar to punctuate each short jaunt with an ice-cold beer that can be had for the equivalent of a fistful of pennies.
The non-suicidal Westerner will necessarily get around mostly on foot. Vietnam is worth visiting for the traffic alone. The streets buzz day and night with the whine of little 100cc and 125cc motorcycles. I have my motorcycle license endorsement, and I rode bikes – mainly big, American-made cruisers – for a decade. I wouldn’t dare to enter the stream of traffic in Saigon on a motorcycle.
As a pedestrian, the American style of street-crossing (to wait for the directions of a traffic light or to pause until a sufficient gap in the traffic presents itself) is a nonoption. This would lead to entire lives lived on street corners. Instead, you start walking — never dashing, never being indecisive, always at a constant, confident pace — and the people on motorbikes deftly swerve around you.
You marvel at the ingenuity of what gets transported on motorcycles that a single average-sized American would struggle to fit onto. A family of four is de rigueur. Once I saw a man speed by with at least half a dozen 50-gallon drums lashed together and impossibly balanced above him.
I witnessed a single traffic accident. The drivers involved shouted and gesticulated wildly at one another for a minute, as their cohorts continued to swarm around them, then each picked up his motorbike and continued on.
Four-wheeled vehicles are not unheard of in Vietnam. In the city, I crawled along in one slower than I could walk, trapped in a little bubble created for us by all the motorcycles. Out in the Mekong Delta, we took a van on the way to the boats. Though this van did have its own Wi-Fi that seemed to work just fine even well out into the jungle, it was a practical, utilitarian affair, far from the luxuriant family minivans with built-in touchscreens that we are used to in the United States.
Individual tastes differ, of course, but I think it’s fair to say that the Vietnamese generally value practicality, affordability, and suitability for the existing traffic culture when it comes to their vehicles. It is an absurd fantasy to think that Vietnam is going to start importing, in large numbers, huge, expensive, gas-guzzling American-made SUVs.
In announcing a new trade deal with Vietnam, President Donald Trump said, “It is my opinion that the SUV or, as it is sometimes referred to, Large Engine Vehicle, which does so well in the United States, will be a wonderful addition to the various product lines within Vietnam.” Never going to happen.
Even with no trade barriers to selling our big, dumb SUVs in Vietnam, which is what Trump is claiming his trade deal will accomplish (though we have yet to see any details), the U.S. is not going to move a lot of SUVs there. You’ll find somewhat different figures depending on the source, but the equivalent of $697 per month seems to be a pretty high-end estimate of the average salary in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the average price of a new vehicle in the U.S. stands at about $48,000. You can do the math on that.
Trump says that although Vietnam will be able to import U.S. goods with a 0% tariff, American importers will pay a 20% tariff on Vietnamese goods (we import far more from Vietnam than we export to it). There will also be a 40% levy on shipments from third countries that are routed through Vietnam (Trump added no details about how the levy on trans-shipments would be implemented and enforced).
President Trump’s new trade deal will not lead to a bonanza of American SUV sales to people who don’t want them and can’t afford them. The Vietnamese are already building better and far cheaper vehicles on their own.
In the off chance that I’m wrong, though, get there before America’s bigger-is-better vehicular lunacy ruins Vietnamese traffic culture. What they have there now is far more elegant, in its own way, than the sprawling mobile status-symbol parade that we have here.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].
