The Pomina Flat Steel JSC plant in Phu My, Vietnam on April 9. Vietnamese steelmakers are feeling the impact of seismic changes in geopolitics and global trade.
Photographer: Thong Vo/Bloomberg
In China’s Backyard, Steel Buyer Vietnam Is Trying to Stem a Tide of Cheap Metal
A trade war between the world’s two largest economies has caught this Southeast Asian nation in the crossfire.
It’s 8am and already sweltering at the Pomina Flat Steel JSC plant outside Ho Chi Minh City, as the night shift’s last pour of molten metal is shaped, cooled and cut into rods. Down the road, at a Vietnam Steel Corp facility, a long strip is uncoiled into an acid bath and fed through a powerful press, making it thinner but tougher.
Once finished, these batches of metal will be sold into one of the fastest-growing steel markets in the world. Output could grow as much as 10% this year, according to the Vietnam Steel Association. Demand could reach as much as 25 million tons, up around 5% on last year — even as, to the north, China’s far larger steel industry struggles with oversupply and the impact of a protracted property crisis.