Is Vietnam playing Trump’s game? Billions in property deals suggest so
Critics question the long-term economic benefit of luxury towers and golf courses for Vietnam, fuelling speculation about a quid pro quo
Trump Tower in New York. The Trump Organisation plans to build a similar edifice in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: AP
The occasional water buffalo still wanders across the vacant plots of Thu Thiem, an area of Vietnam’s most populous city long promised redevelopment that is now poised for transformation on a grand, possibly Trumpian, scale.
Set along the Saigon River, with the glassy skyline of downtown Ho Chi Minh City rising just 3km (1.9 miles) away, Thu Thiem could soon be home to a new Trump Tower after the US president’s middle son Eric, executive vice-president of the family’s real estate empire, scouted out the site last month.
No official approval has yet been announced, but Reuters puts the projected investment in the high-rise at US$1 billion, with hopes that Vietnam’s famously tangled bureaucracy will, for once, fail to be an obstacle. Should all go according to plan, construction on the 60-storey tower could begin as early as next year.
Yet the Trump family’s ambitions in Vietnam stretch far beyond Thu Thiem.
Eric Trump’s itinerary also included breaking ground on a US$1.5 billion 18-hole golf course, resort and residential complex in northern Hung Yen – the home province of Communist Party chief To Lam.
Eric Trump speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Trump International Hung Yen golf project in Vietnam on May 21. Photo: VNA via AP
While in Vietnam, the Trump scion also met local officials in Ho Chi Minh City.
Lavishing praise on the Trump Organisation’s Vietnamese partner, property developer Kinh Bac City Development, he declared that the pending projects would be “the envy of all of Asia and of the entire world”.
With the Southeast Asian export powerhouse dangerously exposed to the threat of looming US tariffs, the Trump family’s interest in Vietnam could solidify Hanoi’s position in trade talks. Notably, the golf project predates both the tariffs and Donald Trump’s re-election to the US presidency, with an agreement signed in September.
In Thu Thiem, where authorities have earmarked swathes of land for the city’s future central business district, the prospect of a “Trump bump” is being met with cautious optimism.
“I heard about Eric Trump’s visit to Ho Chi Minh City on Instagram,” said Que Anh, who sells soft drinks and fried food from a street cart along a busy road in Thu Thiem.
“It’s a good thing,” she told This Week in Asia, her words nearly lost amid the hum of a generator and the steady thrum of passing traffic. “If the Trump building is built here, it will add a lot of value to this area … and create a lot of jobs for Vietnamese.”
But Que Anh worries, like many others, that rapid development could push out locals and leave Thu Thiem “just for rich people.”
“We just worry if the Trump building is done then we won’t be able to sell street food any more,” she added.
Since the 1990s, more than 10,000 residents have been displaced from Thu Thiem, as authorities cleared land for the city’s “new urban area”, now linked to the city’s downtown by a glitzy cable-stayed bridge over the Saigon River.
Among the mix of shiny new buildings and empty tracts of land, The Metropole luxury apartment complex stands at the heart of Thu Thiem – a focal point for evening strolls, marathon starting lines and a jumble of vendors.
Plans for a Trump Tower in Thu Thiem are still in the early stages, but as with the northern golf course, the Trump Organisation is expected to operate the site, with Kinh Bac City handling development.
The timing of Eric’s visit, with a US tariff threat hanging over Vietnam, has fuelled speculation about the family’s deals.
“It might mean that Trump may not need to pay a high price for the land he acquired, and it might not even have the kind of proper valuation of the land,” said a Ho Chi Minh City-based businesswoman, asking to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject.
“Trump as a president is very unique,” she observed of Hanoi’s approach to trade negotiations. “We are smart in adapting to his game.”
The heart of the deal
After announcing a steep 46 per cent tariff on Vietnamese goods in April alongside a tranche of global “Liberation Day” levies, US President Trump later paused their implementation for 90 days pending trade negotiations – the final rounds of which just so happen to coincide with his family’s new multibillion-dollar ventures.
Securing tariff relief is vital for Vietnam. Last year, the country exported US$142.4 billion in goods to the US – equalling roughly 30 per cent of its gross domestic product. But the US alleges much of that figure is inflated by Chinese goods diverted through Vietnamese supply chains to dodge existing tariffs on China.
Hanoi has pledged to crack down on this transshipment and has struck deals with major US companies in a bid to reduce its trade surplus, including commitments to buy military kit, Boeing aircraft and a contract with Elon Musk’s satellite internet company, Starlink.
Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said Hanoi was likely using business deals with the Trump empire as a bargaining tool.
“I can’t say for a fact that it’s entirely related to the trade negotiations, but I think it would require a remarkable degree of dissonance to say that the timing is coincidental,” Poling said.
(From left) To Lam, general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party, and US President Donald Trump. Photos: AFP
Nguyen Hong Hai, a senior lecturer of politics and international relations at Hanoi’s VinUniversity, called the Trump Organisation’s investment an “auspicious opportunity” to work with the American leader.
“Mr Trump will see that it is a very positive sign,” Hai said, referring to Vietnam’s swift pace of business with the Trump Organisation. “There is a very high possibility that Vietnam and the United States can achieve the deal in the coming weeks.”
This gesture of goodwill towards a famously transactional US president has not escaped the attention of the Vietnamese public.
A father-of-five, watching his children ride a merry-go-round outside The Metropole, voiced hope that a Trump Tower could help Vietnam clinch a favourable trade deal.
“I think if a person who has such power and influence like Trump invests into [Ho Chi Minh City] then it’s going to help to improve our city,” he said, declining to give his name.
An aerial view of historic low-rise properties in front of high-rise commercial buildings in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: AFP
A woman selling running gear near the luxury apartment complex echoed this sentiment.
“I think it is such a good idea because of Trump’s good image – it can be marketing for Vietnam,” she said.
But beyond the immediate calculus of trade, Poling questioned the long-term benefit of Trump’s high-profile projects in Vietnam.
“Is slapping Trump’s name on a high-rise in Ho Chi Minh City – a city that has no shortage of empty high-rises right now – going to help?” he asked.
“These are not power plants, they’re not roads, they’re not factories, these aren’t engines of the economy,” Poling added, describing the northern golf course’s prospects as “marginal”.
Is slapping Trump’s name on a high-rise in Ho Chi Minh City – a city that has no shortage of empty high-rises right now – going to help?Gregory Poling, Southeast Asia analyst
For Tan Huynh, managing partner of Ho Chi Minh City-based data analytics firm THKeymaker, the rapid pace of the Trump projects also shines a light on deeper domestic issues: an overreliance on real estate and foreign investment as an economic driver, and the privileges afforded to those with connections.
He pointed to soaring housing prices in the city where “real estate has become the dominant investment channel … [and] everybody wins except the average people.”
“It sends the message that if you are in the right lane … if you know the right people and if you’re in the right spot, basically no law will apply to you,” Huynh said.
The city offers scant affordable housing options but an overabundance of high-end developments. Real estate is a frequent source of scandal, with the country’s largest case of financial fraud tied to property mogul Truong My Lan.
In both Hung Yen and Ho Chi Minh City, the Trump Organisation’s partner is Kinh Bac City, whose chairman Dang Thanh Tam is a fixture in Vietnam’s business and politics circles.
Eric Trump and his wife Lara Trump (second from left) take a selfie with Dang Thanh Tam (second from right) as they attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the Hung Yen golf course project. Photo: AFP
“If they were not well-established in Vietnam’s economy, then the Trump Organisation wouldn’t have selected them as partners to make such a huge investment project in Vietnam,” Hai said.
But Tam and his sister Dang Thi Hoang Yen, also known as Maya Dangelas, have a chequered past.
Hoang Yen, a permanent US resident since 2005 and also an American citizen, is rumoured to have links with the Trump Organisation through American property investments.
In February, her Tan Tao Corporation was delisted from the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange for violating information disclosure regulations, after which Hoang Yen took legal action against the Vietnamese government alleging that authorities forced her to liquidate Tan Tao’s assets after it defaulted on a debt of roughly US$900,000.
News of the Trump Organisation’s partnership caught some in Vietnam’s business community by surprise.
“Somehow the family … pulled this deal together,” a Vietnamese businesswoman told This Week in Asia, requesting anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter. “It’s the resurrection of an empire.”
