Major US business mission comes knocking at Vietnam's door

Representatives of more than 50 U.S. companies including Boeing, Netflix, and SpaceX will be in Vietnam from March 21-23 as part of the largest ever U.S. business mission to discuss investment and business opportunities.

The senior-level mission is organized by the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, an advocacy group that aims to foster economic growth and trade ties between the U.S. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

This 2023 Vietnam Business Mission is the biggest ever U.S. mission to the country, said Vu Tu Thanh, the council’s representative in Vietnam, home to a market of almost 100 million in the population and cementing its status as a production base amid global supply chain diversification and the “China plus one” trend.

In addition to Apple, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, the mission also includes semiconductors companies, pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, medical device maker Abbott, financial firms Visa and Citibank, internet and cloud companies Meta and Amazon Web Services, he said.

SpaceX is looking to sell its satellite internet services to Vietnam and other countries in the region, according to the mission organizer.

Global streaming giant Netflix is preparing to open an office in Vietnam to serve the tech-savvy market of 100 million people. Vishal Sarin, vice president of Netflix Asia Pacific, visited Vietnam in December to study conditions for establishing a wholly foreign-owned company in the country. The giant completed an assessment in late 2022 that evaluated the security and political risks of operating an office in Vietnam and the handling of user data and sensitive content.

Boeing, a world-leading aircraft manufacturer, had earlier said it wants to develop its supply chain in Vietnam by making more domestic businesses its suppliers. At the Boeing Aerospace Industry Forum in Hanoi last August, Boeing Vietnam country director Michael Nguyen said the American giant wanted to become a strategic aircraft supplier in Vietnam and was seeking more domestic suppliers.