Vietnam is set to sign a European Free Trade Association (EFTA) this week, as Hanoi closes in on a final trade agreement with the United States.
Reuters reported yesterday that the agreement with the EFTA bloc, which consists of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, will be signed in Hanoi on Sunday in the presence of Swiss Economy Minister Guy Parmelin, who is currently on a trip to Asia.
The talks between Vietnam and the ETFA began in 2012 and have proceeded at a steady pace since. The two sides officially concluded the negotiations in July, following a ministerial meeting in Reykjavik that involved “intensive technical talks.”
At the time, the ETFA stated that the agreement covered “trade in goods, trade in services, rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, investment, intellectual property rights, trade remedies, government procurement, trade and sustainable development, small and medium-sized enterprises, and cooperation and capacity building.” Bilateral trade between EFTA and Vietnam amounted to $5.4 billion in 2025, up from around $561 million a decade earlier, according to the bloc.
Hovering over the planned signing ceremony is Vietnam’s recent arrest of a Norwegian national of Vietnamese descent on terrorism-related charges. Nguyen Duc Thuan, 52, was among three activists from the pro-democracy group Viet Tan whom the Vietnamese authorities said were arrested for entering the country illegally. Rights groups, as well as Viet Tan itself, say that the three men were abducted in Cambodia, although Phnom Penh said that it had no record of the men leaving the country.
According to Reuters, Norway’s Foreign Ministry said that State Secretary Astrid Bergmal, who will attend the signing ceremony, “will raise the case of the detained Norwegian citizen with the Vietnamese authorities during her visit.” The Ministry added that it was treating Thuan’s case “as a high priority” and expressed hope that it “may be resolved without unnecessary delay.”
The imminent signing of the EFTA deal comes as Vietnam and the U.S. move toward the signing of their Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade.
Vietnam has sent its “final wording” for a trade agreement to the U.S. with hopes the deal can be quickly signed, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Tuc told a business summit yesterday, according to Nikkei Asia.
Hanoi and Washington began negotiations on the trade deal in April 2025, shortly after President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement, when Vietnam was hit with an eye-popping 46 percent tariff. The two nations signed a framework for a trade agreement in October that lowered the tariff rate by 20 percent, but despite months of negotiations, they have yet to reach a final agreement.
The negotiations have been held up by the turbidity in U.S. trade policy. Vietnam is currently the subject of a number of Section 301 investigations that the Trump administration has been using to get around the Supreme Court ruling in February that struck down the sweeping “liberation day” tariffs.
Vietnam was among 60 nations that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative threatened in June with tariffs of 10-12.5 percent due to their alleged failures to take action on forced labor. It is also the subject of separate Section 301 probes into alleged excess manufacturing capacity and intellectual property rights.
After meeting with Vietnamese President To Lam in New York last month, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that the two sides had made “substantial progress” and were “very close to reaching the final outcome.”
Vietnam signed a free trade agreement with the European Union in 2020.