Vietnam has quietly become the country selling the most to the US relative to what it buys back, an unexpected winner from Trump's tariff war.

• Vietnam's trade surplus with the US hit $114 billion in the first half of this year, passing Taiwan, Mexico and China.
• US imports from Vietnam jumped 40% from a year earlier, a striking result for an economy a quarter the size of Mexico's.
• The cause is the tariff gap: Chinese goods face an effective rate of 23.2%, Vietnamese goods just 6.5%.
• Big brands like Apple, Nike and Lululemon have shifted supply chains out of China, and furniture makers have flipped their sourcing mix the same way.
• White House trade adviser Peter Navarro suspects Chinese goods are being relabelled through Vietnam, but 60% of Vietnam's US-bound exports are machinery and electronics made by Samsung, Intel and Foxconn plants there.

Outlook: Washington is likely to keep pressing Hanoi on transshipment, but the electronics build-out suggests Vietnam's surge is real and set to continue.