Vietnam-Japan Trade Relations in the 1st Decade of the 21st Century

Since the early years of the past century, the expansion of integration and economic cooperation has become an inevitable trend for economic development of countries. The globalization has opened up significant economic opportunities to countries that no one can deny. In such context of the international division of labor is going strong, the international economic cooperation has become the best way for states to promote their maximum advantage, as well as fully exploit the benefits of the other countries to serve their country namely, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Vietnam, too, to accelerate the process of industrialization and modernization, the Communist Party and government have been implementing the foreign policy of openness and diversification and multilateral international economic relations, taking the objectives of peace and development as the standard for all external activities. Unexceptionably, both Vietnam and Japan have found each other in the favorable conditions, as well as the mutual national economic benefits to develop and strengthen bilateral cooperation relationships between the two countries. The pinnacle of this relation was marked by the Vietnam-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2008. After over three years of implementation, there have been a significant benefits and opportunities gaining from the Vietnamese-Japanese trade relations. Besides the positive results achieved in the trade relations, there have been some limitations that need to be surmounted, removed to further develop the full potential of the two countries, to strengthen the relationship between the two nations. The purpose of this research is to evaluate economic effects of Vietnam’s accession to Vietnam-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (VJEPA) by implementing tariff elimination, logistics enhancement, and reduction in service trade barriers. The hypothesis is that two participating countries can benefit from the accession, resulted in higher real GDP and economic development. The research has found out that VJEPA is an important step on a longer journey of partnership between the two countries through the evidences of new opportunities for both but there is still a lot of work to be done on both sides to take full advantage of the relationship.