Shifting perspectives of supply chains

For more than three decades, Vietnam’s integration into international production networks has followed a steady and successful path.

- By Quyen Nguyen Director, CEL

Investors were drawn by competitive costs, political stability, and access to global markets. Over time, manufacturing scaled, supplier ecosystems deepened, and Vietnam built a strong reputation as a reliable production base across electronics, garments, furniture, and consumer goods.That foundation remains highly relevant. At the same time, the sources of future advantage are evolving.

Globally, the shift underway is not simply another round of relocation. It reflects a broader recalibration in how global value chains are designed, with greater emphasis on resilience, predictability, and long-term certainty alongside efficiency. Vietnam continues to benefit from this shift while moving into a more sophisticated phase of integration.

Vietnam’s total merchandise trade is projected to have reached $920 billion in 2025, placing the country among the world’s most trade-integrated manufacturing economies. This scale is a strength. Increasingly, however, competitiveness is shaped by how trade is organised, governed, and supported by systems that enable continuity and confidence over time.

Within global supply chains, an important structural change is taking place. In the past, networks often resembled pyramids, with a small number of large buyers at the top supported by layers of increasingly standardised suppliers below. Today, many supply chains look more like diamonds, broad in the middle but narrowing at specific upstream points.

These narrowing points are less about factory capacity and more about access to critical inputs such as specialised processes, certifications, energy reliability, and compliance capabilities. In many industries, a limited number of qualified nodes now play an outsized role in determining overall system performance.