AI helps drive Vietnam’s export growth: HSBC

In its latest ‘Vietnam at a Glance’ report, HSBC noted that Vietnam’s trade expanded 18 percent year on year, reaching a record US$928 billion in 2025 despite U.S. tariffs.

While part of this growth was driven by the acceleration of orders placed in advance (front loading), the bank said AI also played a significant role.

According to HSBC’s analysis, the impact of front loading on export growth to the United States started to ease in many countries.

However, Vietnam’s export growth remained far stronger than that of its peers, rising 30 percent year on year based on a three-month moving average.

HSBC explained that AI was providing a major boost to global trade by driving demand for AI-related processors, particularly as competition between the U.S. and China in the semiconductor sector intensified.

As a result, this was a period in which exports of electronic products could better withstand the impact of tariffs.

The influence of AI-related exports was evident in the data from Taiwan and South Korea.

Leveraging its strengths in this sector, Taiwan closed the year with a record export value of $640.75 billion.

Taiwan successfully capitalized on surging demand for chips and AI-related technologies, according to Reuters.

South Korea’s exports of information and communications technology products reached a record high in 2025, up 12.4 percent year on year.

With its semiconductor exports soaring 22.1 percent from a year earlier, the country’s Ministry of Science and ICT said the expansion of AI data centers worldwide, along with rising demand for storage devices, contributed significantly to the record export performance.

For Vietnam, HSBC believed the country was also well positioned to benefit from this trend, even though its export structure remained focused on lower-end consumer electronics.

Electronics exports accounted for 35 percent of Vietnam’s total exports, a sharp increase from just five percent in 2010.

Beyond product selection, Vietnam also made positive progress in gaining market share in the United States.

Vietnam’s exports to the U.S. jumped nearly 30 percent year on year in 2025.

Despite facing a reciprocal tariff rate of 20 percent, the country expanded its market share in products such as mobile phones, textiles, and footwear.

AI could lift global trade by nearly 40% by 2040

The World Trade Organization’s World Trade Report 2025 showed that with the right supportive policies, AI could increase the value of cross-border flows of goods and services by nearly 40 percent by 2040, driven by productivity gains and lower trade costs.

According to the report, AI could deliver substantial growth to global trade and GDP by 2040.

Under different scenarios, global trade is forecast to expand 34-37 percent, depending on how effectively low-, middle-, and high-income economies keep pace in terms of policy alignment and technological adoption.

Over the same period, global GDP could rise 12-13 percent under the corresponding scenarios.