Australia Post Halts Transit Shipping to Us as 'chaotic' Tariff Deadline Looms
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Australia Post has halted transit shipping to the US due to impending tariffs, sparking debate about the impact of protectionist policies on global trade and e-commerce.
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The question is what's the West doing to uppe their game, and right now it seems that our side is fundamentally incompatible with the sort of things China is doing, and then we resort to blaming them for whatever we can.
When you buy Anker for example, you are buying, pure China products, but still a very good choice.
Many US companies choose to manufacture in China because the tooling is more advanced than in other countries + scalability is high.
If you buy a 2 USD dress don’t expect it to be super high-quality but at the same time the price is reasonable for that.
Turns out this matters. But it’s still better to buy made in EU/USA.
Good luck getting compensation when that product from AJDHJk sets your house on fire or makes you sick.
In consumer products, the German and US brands do indeed manufacture in China, but then do their QC and supervision to get to an acceptable level.
You can see how this goes wrong with Anker’s recent recall, where they got blindsided by their supplier and now have to do a recall because their portable batteries can cause fires.
Also, I recently watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2TfbN3v8h8 , which may be smoke and mirrors and have me slightly biased. Also, my iphone is made in China.
The thing is, there are three ways to survive as a company. The one way is establishing a brand like Ecoflow, DJI, Anker, and do what you suggest. The second one is to produce directly for some large Western brand (either as contract manufacturer or ODM). The final way is to just flood the Western markets with cheap garbage and alphabet-soup brands, and make up the lower margins in sales volume. There can't be that many companies making and selling PL259 adapters as there are "brands" on Amazon selling them, after all.
...and because they don't have a presence in the West and don't care about their brand(s), if the shit really were to hit the fan in such a big way that they can't just sit it out, they can simply drop that particular brand, while the remaining heads of the Hydra will be just fine.
a lot of US manufactures had been recalling their products too.
....until the QC and supervisor turn their backs.
In a second read, now I understand that the post implies that China produces lots of junk that then they magically teleport to the doorstep of unwilling Americans, who then snare on the junk and fall when they are trying to leave their houses to buy American-made high quality goods, thus thwarting the good business and good intentions of that economy /s.
Look, I'm okay if people want to have their government impose on them what they should buy and they should not, on the principle that national capital should get a bigger slice of the pie. But if you are going to allow the government to decide that for everybody, you may as well not stop there and let the government decide on other matters, like healthcare, education, and economic incentives for society.
In Switzerland if you import dangerous junk and sell it in your store, you are liable. Of course the end consumer can also directly purchase from China as well but then it is their responsibility (Eigenverantwortung).
Customs will also confiscate fake brands and for example radios that violate frequencies rules (unless you can provide documents that you are allowed to operate such a device, ham radio license etc.)
Oh, that's why amazon.ch redirects to amazon.de... In general, manufacturers and retailers have more legal responsibility for what they sell here in Germany than in the USA, but it feels like Switzerland takes that even further, in good but more expensive ways.
The same in the UK, and a lot of other countries. The retailer is responsible to the customer, the importer or wholesaler to the retailer.
> Of course the end consumer can also directly purchase from China as well but then it is their responsibility
Providing an easy workaround to safety regulations does not sound like a great idea to me. If you let consumers easily buy unsafe things it will lead to problems. Consumers often do not even realise that things do not meet standards, especially if they buy it through somewhere like Amazon.
You could argue that consumers should do their own checks, but then why have the regulation of what can be sold in the first place?
It's Switzerland.... I can buy fireworks rockets as big as my leg at the grocery store just before Swiss national day.
That's basically subsidizing climate change and encouraging production to move to dirtier regimes. Seems fairly wild.
People buy cheap junk because it’s cheap. Why do you think so few people buy American made tools ? Your government is now forcing you to buy expensive goods and you’re, “happy with it”? It’s wild. I’m one of those people who always purchased USA, British , Australian, I still but I've had to watch many of my favourite brands lose their soul and offshore only because consumers chose to stop supporting them. It was the choice of consumers. It's just the sad reality, I'm certain the fix isn't government intervention though.
The problem isn’t new tariffs, but how the USA wants to collect them. It’s mentioned in the article:
“IMAG's Ms Muth said the overarching concern is that many postal carriers are not set up to ‘collect and remit’ the duties specified by Donald Trump's executive order.”
Normally tariffs are collected by the receiving country when a package arrives. Trump wants foreign countries’ postal carriers to collect US tariffs and somehow remit the money to the American authorities… But there are no systems set up for this. The Americans haven’t even provided a way to send those remittances.
Obviously this is not something that postal carriers around the world can just spin up in two weeks, just because the Americans suddenly decided they want foreign post offices to collect their import taxes. So the only option is not to ship to America at all.
For good reason too, the sender engaged the carrier. The receiver has no business relationship with the carrier, so they don't have an opportunity to pay any tariff to the carrier.
This is especially relevant when the carrier engages a local contractor for the last leg of a delivery, because they don't even have a presence there.
So there does seem to be some mechanism for closing the buyer-seller-taxman loop. Unfortunately I have yet to find a reliable way to send things using this system.
Searching "EU IOSS UK" also shows some sort of support from Shopify and similar.
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/united-kingdom/corporate/other-...
An £8 fee makes a cheap product bought from China unappealing, so those sites do pay the fees. It's less important if the British person is buying something for €100 from a tiny French business.
We've got the same thing with GST, basically like VAT or sales tax. So that'll appear on the invoice from AliExpress or Steam or wherever.
Businesses have a threshold before they need to charge it though. If they're under that threshold (like a small business), but the value of goods is over another threshold, then the receiver has to pay GST.
If I remember correctly, customs would mail me a letter, and I'd pay it like a tariff. Which brings me back to the main point, that's just that the carrier has nothing to do with it. It's ridiculous to get them involved in a transaction they're not a party to.
Process might be slightly different, I'm remembering from about fifteen years ago.I have seen some foreign merchants (I think DigiKey?) offer the choice, as their business customers don't need to pay VAT directly in this way, and may well prefer to do the import paperwork themselves.
I haven't seen a choice for any large retailer (Amazon, eBay, Etsy, AliExpress etc). They don't want customers annoyed by fees, or returned packages from unpaid fees and duties.
I get an SMS saying that my parcel has arrived in the country but I have to pay customs before it's released for delivery, done via the site above.
But using this system, I can order something from Ali Express for €10 + €2.50 VAT, pay Ali Express €12.50, and they send the VAT to Denmark. The tracking number on the package proves the VAT was paid, and the package sails through customs.
(There's also a UK system, very similar, but I have forgotten the name of it.)
[1] https://vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/index_en
When the Obama administration forced every bank in the world to start reporting the data and assets of any US-adjacent person (creating nightmare scenarios that continue today for most US expats), the entire world just rolled over and gave in. It was one of the greatest abuses of power, ever, all enabled by the US dollar's reserve currency status.
I can only hope this time is different due to the current administration being more hated around the world.
At this end this just pushes India, Vietnam and China into the arms of the rest of the world.
Then US is going to be left alone with their precious pure home-made products like Twinkies, Spam, American cheese or Budweiser.
The great brands are going to go more and more offshore, like Apple or Google already does.
About half of us are shocked and revolted by pretty much everything he says and does.
It’s FAFO writ large, and the US has been ‘exceptional’ for so long they think they can avoid the FO part.
And never seen news discussions, sanctions, seen immigration policies, etc?
It may not been as bad and direct as discrimination against the Japanese in WW2, but a ton of people absolutely do discriminate that way.
And let’s not talk about Muslims (or anyone with a turban, like Sikhs) post 9/11.
But it’s the inevitable consequence of what is going on, and it’s going to get worse.
American’s have had a positive PR program for so long, they’re just completely ignorant of what it’s like to no longer have that.
The US has switched from exporting the American Dream to exporting the American Nightmare, and that will have long term consequences.
People are only now starting to wake up to that fact/feel them, but even if we stopped right this second it will take decades for this to play out. And we’re not stopping, but flooring it.
This, 100%.
I'm Australian. I grew up playing basketball and watching American TV and movies, even had superbowl parties with friends on multiple occasions, which is pretty rare here in Australia.
Been to the US on holidays. Always got along well with Americans who came here.
Take this free opinion from someone outside the exceptionalist bubble: America is on the decline... and it's going to get worse.
People won't easily forget this grotesque spectacle.
And last time i check, Trump won most of the swing state, so a large part of US believe in Trump.
Nobody is saying he doesn’t officially represent the USA. It’s about not assuming ALL Americans agree with what the administration is doing. A reasonable ask, no?
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
For example, does it make sense to blame Americans for their failure to protest every weekend?
If so, then why stop at Americans? Why not blame e.g. all Norwegians as well?
Or why not blame the Americans who merely protest, as opposed to organizing a general labor strike or for not attempting an outright assassination?
My only point is that if you're going to blame some people and not others for the current state of affairs, it would be interesting to understand the justification.
Not gp, but: sorry, Americans, for whatever voter turnouts, gerrymandering, secret deals, etc, etc.
He's your president. Twice.
Whatever you say at least Trump has truly passionate base. Or will next Democrat nominee be Harris?
In fact, you could legitimately blame people like me for not going further to stop the madness.
In my particular case, that could cost me my job, which means losing health insurance for my family and myself. That's a choice I'm making, for sure. To that extent I'm culpable for this situation.
So, while it’s true that US citizens are not directly responsible for Trump, there is still a dereliction of ethical duty happening, in my opinion, assuming we agree that Trump is harming other people unnecessarily (which, naturally, many Trump supporters would disagree with.)
Of course, even if I’m right, what does that mean in practice? That random Americans on vacation in Italy can be snatched up and sent to The Hague? No, obviously not. I think the most practical effect is that this should give all Americans pause to think, and to at minimum ensure that they are not contributing to the problem in any way, and better yet, fighting the problem in some way.
Of course, this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that only 1/3 or so of Americans voted for Harris, which was the only choice that actually could have worked to stop Trump. 1/3 voted for him directly, and of course they are responsible, but another 1/3 couldn’t be bothered to vote, so it is actually a supermajority of the American people that are shitty, either because they couldn’t care less about other people, or they actively contributed to the problem.
Like sure, I get that the above is propaganda spread by the machine, but good luck telling that to the Europeans that have dealt with Americans that believe it; furthermore, I think it's telling that a decade ago, Canadians would wear emblems to distinguish themselves from Americans, lest they be confused for the egocentric and rude Americans.
The first paragraph is propaganda, but Americans haven't exactly denied it, nor have they been humble about their place in the world, or the flaws in their nation. Their actions have instead left many of us of the opinion that Americans actually believe it.
To be fair - which country has ever been the most powerful in the world and humble about it. The UK certainly wasn't - and after more than a century still hasn't learned that it is no longer exceptional.
Many Americans do believe it of course, otherwise they wouldn't have voted the way they did.
> If they do, maybe that’s fine, but they can’t be held culpable if they do nothing. The citizens however, must be, as there otherwise is no one else to stop the evil. Now, I include the US in this list too.
On an abstract level how are the citizens more responsible than random countries? Random countries and random citizens are in the same boat: they have to deal with something they had no simple choice over (at least in totalitarian states).
Mind you I agree with the proposition, but the explanation is not satisfactory.
The commenters in this thread engaging in transactional tribalism are angry at Trump supporters in the US (and therefore, all Americans because of their tribal "us vs them" lens) for engaging in the same transactional tribalism that they live in. From a game theory perspective, they want the US and northern Europeans to continue to be the good person in the Prisoner's Dilemma game while they reap the rewards.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the comments here actually support the beliefs of Trump's base, which is "the world hates us, only pretends to be nice to us when we help make them rich, and power is the only currency that matters."
There are people in this thread complaining about tariffs on imports in the US that are a fraction of what their own nations charge on imports. They don't seem to grasp that "fairness" is an emotional construct that matters for human voting.
> As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the comments here actually support the beliefs of Trump's base, which is "the world hates us, only pretends to be nice to us when we help make them rich, and power is the only currency that matters."
When you are t like Trump does, yes you will loose the affection and respect.
And besides, Trump and his fans both see those who are friendly to them as suckers to take advantage of.
Your wish to be a bully and simultaneously treated like a friend is extremely unrealistic. And not just that, it is a loosing proposition.
His motto may end up being “Oderint Dum Metuant”.
I'd put that at less than 1/3, actually.
The problem is that there is a good third of the US that seems to be completely oblivious that bad shit is going down until it shows up and kicks them in the balls personally.
This is, sadly, neither new nor limited to the US.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." John Philpot Curran--1790
But it's not a huge issue in Australia, because Australia has compulsory voting. Whatever you think of the indolent that didn't vote in the USA, if you are right that only 1/3 of the population supported Trump he would not have got in if voting was compulsory.
As an Australia, my gut feeling is that our compulsory voting drags everything towards the centre. If a party strays too far from there, their gone. For example we like the USA do have two major parties, split down similar lines. In one state, Western Australia, the right party got taken over by some right wing religious sect. Very few people want government institutions run as a church, and they now have 7 of the 70 or so seats. They ran the place in 2017, and had 31 seats in 2021.
Nationally, the right decided marching to Trump's tune would be a vote winner in this years federal election. In other words, they veered sharply to the right. The result - they lost 25% of their seats.
Followed by 32% of the voting population which strongly approves of the result.
The ”not all of us” is a very tempting copout but it is quite evident that the American psyche is in general aligned with Trump.
But hey, you get to pretend it’s some moral high ground, so, yay! Nice job.
Only 65% voted, so it’s probably safe to say that only 35-40% of the population support him.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
So 35% voted the option "I'm fine with whatever comes" so a blanket approval can be assumed to whoever won, i.e. in this case an implicit support for Trump.
From what I hear, many people in blue states made the same calculation.
Because of how the electoral college works, some people in deeply Republican states could correctly assume that their individual vote simply wouldn't matter.
I don't know if such reasoning swung the election or not. I imagine some political pollsters have a better sense of it.
They have no problem with China destroying their fisheries, and joining with India to buy tons of Russian oil and finance the destruction of Ukraine, while simultaneously emitting vastly more CO2 than the US does.
They just want free defense, one sided "free trade" and the minute they stop getting it, they hate everyone in this country.
I don't agree with this attitude, but the commenter absolutely embodies it. This whole thread embodies it. It's the kind of thing I would send to a bunch of swing voters to persuade them to continue to support these policies.
"vastly" is well out of place here.
Currently, on a per annum basis, China is the number one emitter, the United States is number two. China currently puts out ~ 2.5 the total of the US.
* less than 3x is hardly "vastly more"
* on a per capita basis China emits less per person than the US.
* Much of China's emissions are due the US offshoring manufacture, a large chunk the CO2 rising from China is a result of US consumer demand.
Moreover, the current yearly outputs are merely the bleeding edge of the CO2 problem - it's the cumulative total that is responsible for the increased insulation that is trapping an increasing amount of heat energy.
On that front the US is responsible for more of the total raised by human activity than China.
By country, per year: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...
By country, cumulative total: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions
Per capita means nothing to the planet. The temperature climbs regardless, and China has a choice and it's chosen power plants even if India doesn't. They are building coal plants every single day and you don't say anything because you are a product of a left-wing movement that views state capitalism as an offshoot of communism and therefore positive. That's why your movement never has anything critical to say about China. You only care about Muslims if they are being murdered by capitalists. But the uyghurs can just go pound sand. They are literally having forced birth control and have lower birth rates than any Muslim population on the planet and you sit there and ignore it.
It is utterly ridiculous to expect India/China to stop buying Russian oil and destroy their domestic economies to satisfy the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the US. Please remember - you have ALREADY oil-sanctioned Venezuela and Iran. Now you oil sanction yet another major oil producing nation ? - so utterly stupid.
Oh btw, the US is financing the Russian War in Ukraine by buying Russian Uranium, Russian Palladium, Russian fertilizer and believe-it-or-not: Russian oil (via processed jet fuel) from India. US imports of Russian minerals and fertilizer were vastly increased in 2025.
China is on track to reduce its use of fossil fuel for energy production
Listen to yourself. That is absolutely ridiculous. This is not a serious conversation. I won't be replying to anymore of your comments.
None of us do at the personal level. At the international level we are compelled to.
Even in an ordinary administration, internationally a state is indivisible from the government it chose, and any strategy to pretend otherwise is doomed to failure or various kinds of corruption. The larger the amount of money that is staked on ignoring/going around/subverting the national policy of the state in which a business partner is based, the greater the chance of encouraging turning-a-blind-eye grift from elected officials, at the very least. "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
But this isn't an ordinary administration. Trump is fully into "l'état, c'est moi" [0] and he goes there more and more by the day. From the outside, the degradation just in the last seven months is extremely obvious.
Given that international trade policy seems to have been entirely handed to the executive, anyone wishing to trade with a US business must simply assume the USA is Trump.
None of the old sense of continuity can be trusted. It's all new. This is deliberate, it's what his voters wanted, but it's also our reality.
[0] I anticipate some pushback here. I would accept the criticism that if we're talking about the USA as a single entity, it's intellectually dishonest to focus on matters of internal policy to back that up. To people who want to make that criticism I would simply ask: what international policy, separable from Trump's own grievances, explains the tariffs on Brazil?
You can spin non-voters however you want, but they were objectively OK with this outcome.
China was similarly unmoved by the threats America made.
Europe was moved and they got an absolutely horrible trade deal.
The substituability story was different ~5-10 years ago and a lot of Americans havent noticed yet that China is now just as good at building wide body airplanes and chips.
No prizes for guessing who has the upper hand in negotiations.
Please note that Ukraine-India relations were never that great due to Kashmir. Ukraine voted against India at UNSC several times pushing for UN intervention and support for Indian sanctions. (If you support referendum for Kashmir, why object to Donetsk referendum?)
Funny thing is that processed oil products (jet fuel/diesel) are in the tariff exempt list. Yes, US purchased jet fuel (reprocessed Russian oil) from India in 2025.
So India should ignore how US has been funding a terrorist nation on their border, and hate Putin for a war that is half-the-planet away?
Sorry, but the world does not revolve around USA :)
I can understand why some are looking elsewhere.
Mexico and Canada also had trade deals, which went from Trump calling it "the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history":
* https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/pr...
To Trump asking "Who would ever sign a thing like this?":
* https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-accidentally-insults...
Given that some (most? all?) of the deals involve US import tariffs, which raise prices/taxes on US consumers, can you illustrate the ways in which they've been generally good? (Especially compared to what the US was doing in December 2024, pre-Trump.)
No deal with Trump is ever closed because the past isn't really the past.
This is now how we must view the USA, which is -- at a foreign and trade policy level at the very least -- indivisible from his mindset.
India should ignore US support of a nation that sends terrorists to target their civilans... but should proactively care about a war happening thousands of miles from them?
That too, to the extent that the entire country shifts to a much more expensive source of fuel, burning bridges with their longtime ally... I don't really see why they should do that.
Edit: Rephrased my point to be argumentative instead of accusatory
Constantly disputed since the partition of India.
> India should ignore US support of a nation that sends terrorists to target their civilans... but should proactively care about a war happening thousands of miles from them?
Straw man. India should care about both. Get the US to pressure Pakistan and ensure the US knows the expense of not buying Russian oil and that is covered by tariffs.
I still think India is better off choosing to make iPhones than buying Russian oil.
Let the US firs un-sanction Venezuala and Iran first - major oil producing nations first. India is not going to starve its people to feed Trump's ego.
US wants airbase capability in Pakistan to bomb Iran - at-least that is what American military analysts are saying. Another compelling reason is exploitable rare earths and oil in Balochistan.
Do note that China is not sanctimoniously ordering India to stop buying oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
Also, those trade deals are not worth much.
The US has a lot of power, that only China comes close to matching. The dominance of the US in certain fields (like IT hardware, software and services, payment services) makes most countries dependent on the US.
> The great brands are going to go more and more offshore, like Apple or Google already does.
Offshore what? Manufacturing? US tariffs do not affect offshoring to sell to other countries, but the US is a huge market for all those brands.
In the case of India and China, I think it's more of a case of India becoming more independent, which is "good" on the one hand ,but probably terrible for American hegemony and they will just side more with Russia and continue to buy resources from them.
I'm not sure if Americans can really grasp how their soft power around the world is vaporizing by the day. Even at it's peak, probably Obama era, I wouldn't say America was default popular, now, I don't know what to say but it's really looking as if people are just deciding to move on from the American experiment as we realize it might not be coming back. Look at places like Switzerland cancelling orders of F35s, just a coincidence ?
I guess smaller countries aren't being left with much choice, that's the fundamental issue.
Edit: I'm not worried about the down votes, but I also think it's sad and maybe even a sign that people have sore feelings about reality?
Meanwhile China actually INVADED Vietnam in 1979, four years after the US-Vietnam War ended!
Both of these countries view China as an immediate potential military threat because it is one, they have fought actual wars with it.
It's so wild how there are all these Western liberals who think Trump is somehow worse than this, I don't even like the guy but these people obviously don't know shit about the history of the region. The history is China warring with these countries!
No one is downplaying anything, there was a lot of animosity in india against china after that. Since it happened during the COVID lockdown, which was attributed to a wuhan lab leak at the time, the animosity intensified. It still exists today.
Of course, animosity is irrelevant in geopolitics, so it is useless to try and reconcile this with varying levels of co-operation and friendly foreign ministry statements between the two countries in the 5 years since.
I mean, do you truly think the USA will come to Vietnam's side if it's invaded by China? Honestly? look at all the whining about helping Ukraine and you think the current administration will enter a hot war with China over Vietnam? 90% of Americans wouldn't even know where that is.
Regarding India and Russia, they're already allies, they already do significant trade, I'm not sure what you're reading but I don't think India is by default America first. They nuclear armed, so they have that "f u" card to play as well.
I'm not based in the west either sorry. I wouldn't say I'm a "western liberal", I see you've already made up your mind though.
If you think those two countries were ever allies in any serious military or political sense you're deluded. The US is Vietnam's biggest customer and they changed the terms under which they're willing to buy stuff, that's all.
You also better believe that when tensions flare up between Vietnam and China again, Vietnam will be begging the US for help.
On a personal level I am American and the most annoying thing about living in Southeast Asia quite frankly is how much people here seem to think they deserve my money in exchange for selling me low quality shit I don't need or want. You can't have my money. Go away. We can end the relationship and I will be perfectly happy without you. It's amazing how this parallels foreign relations.
Basically, the point was that aspiring to be USA ally is not worth the effort.
I think Trump should treat actual allies, like Japan or Canada, better. But India, Vietnam and China? Fuck em. Nothing against them particularly, in fact I have professional relationships with some good people in all three of those countries. But they are not allies and were never going to be, they were always just vendors. If they decide they don't like us and don't want to take our money (they won't decide this), fine. We can spend it elsewhere.
You will find out I guess...
What did the US get from their global hegemony? (Such a tragedy that mostly US-americans ask this, imo.)
They got eg. the petro dollar. Any other nation is buying/selling in dollars, provided by the US. This demand allowed you to amass your gigantic state debt to fund your military which enabled even more hegemony, like brutally messing up latin america with lasting consequences you can still see today, if fox news agrees on it ofc.
Remember when trump chickend out from his global tarifs, because "the markets got the yippies"? Part of that was a coordinated response of (former) allies to sell their US bonds, which, if continued, could have seriously hurt the US household by making new debt significantly more expensive for the US.
This is what you get from it! Cheap debt in a currency you controll! No other country has this privilege!
And in exchange for your fiat money you can devalue as you like, you get goods you wont produce yourself and you can sustain a massive military budget.
I hope trump continues his clueless destructive path and that some MAGA sweat shoppers learn from it (unlikely).
> They also would like the US to lend them military aid if they get into violent trouble with their neighbor.
Nah, USA promised millitary aid, but invariably just takes away while making the promis and then do not deliver.
>I think Trump should treat actual allies, like Japan or Canada, better.
Well, he does not. Actually, he treats them worst then he treats China, India, Vietnam, Russia.
> But India, Vietnam and China?
Note that the actual topic is 'graemep' thinking USA is better ally then China. And people telling him that nope, USA looks like worst less reliable ally then China or India.
Buys American arms, lets US naval assets use its ports (including aircraft carriers), probably a lot of intelligence cooperation we're not aware of.
> You also better believe that when tensions flare up between Vietnam and China again, Vietnam will be begging the US for help.
The more likely scenario is that the US comes begging Vietnam for help in some future conflict because China shut down the South China Sea as part of a blockade of Taiwan, and used missiles to render all US airbases in the region unusable.
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