Vietnam is next in line to grapple with the challenges of widespread supply-chain woes as the country struggles to contain the coronavirus. Beginning today, Vietnam's major industrial southern provinces of Binh Duong and Dong Nai stay-home orders are extended for another 15 days.
"American companies that diversified their supplier bases outside of China to places like Vietnam to avoid then-President Donald Trump's tariffs are now battling to ship goods through local restrictions as Covid outbreaks spread across Southeast Asia," according to Bloomberg.
Vietnam fell four spots last month to 50 out of 53 countries on Bloomberg's Covid Resilience Ranking. The bottom five are all in Southeast Asia and provide about 6% of global exports and supply crucial inputs to the world's top economies, including half of U.S. semiconductor imports, according to estimates by Natixis.
"We're quickly moving into a situation where American kids are going to open gift-wrapped boxes under the Christmas tree to find a little note that says, 'Sorry, that cool present from your Mom and Dad isn't available right now. Please wait about six months,'" Adam Sitkoff, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi told Bloomberg.
Most of the rest of the region is also struggling, according to the manufacturing purchasing managers' indexes for Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Malaysia. Bloomberg reports those countries all remained deep in negative territory last month, likely due new lockdowns that forced factories to halt or slow production.