The transition process of Vietnam’s trade policy from closed economy to “servicification” economy

Abstract

As one typical transition economy, Vietnam has sharply progressed from a centrally-planned system to a market economy due to the economic reform. Together with the socio-economic development strategy, trade policy has been fully consistent with the transformation. While the effects of trade policy have received much concern in the academia, the paper finds out deeply the change on strategies of trade policy in transition economies in the attempt to catching up the advanced countries. The finding is to draw on the whole picture of Vietnamese trade policy over the period (from 1986 to 2016) and to analyse the remarkable changes leading to successes and failures on these policies.