Pham Van Thinh can see the back of an LG electronics factory from his patio, and in his eyes, nothing is more beautiful than that bright white behemoth.

范文盛（音）从自家露台上就能看到LG电子产品工厂的后墙，在他眼里，没有比这个明亮的白色庞然大物更美丽的东西了。

Some nights, when workers stream out after 8 p.m., their lanyards flashing ID cards with new-hire faces, he walks amid the crowd, soaking up the energy of a once-poor village near Vietnam’s northern port of Haiphong that has suddenly joined the march of global trade.

有些晚上，工人们晚8点下班后从工厂鱼贯而出时，他们的脖子上仍挂着闪闪发光的工作证，不少是新入职的员工，范文盛走在人群中，感受着这个曾经贫穷的村庄的活力，这里位于越南北部港口城市海防附近，这个港口已突然加入了全球贸易进程。

“It makes me happy,” said Mr. Van Thinh, 73, a retired police chief who fought for the Communist north in the Vietnam War. “All these young people, they have better lives.”

“这让我很高兴，”现年73岁的范文盛说，他是一名退休的警察局长，曾在越南战争中为共产主义的北方打仗。“所有这些年轻人，他们有更好的生活。”

Six years ago, this cluster of prosperity did not exist. Then President Donald J. Trump hit China with tariffs, igniting a global search for alternatives to Chinese manufacturing.

这种繁荣六年前并不存在。时任美国总统特朗普对中国加征关税后，在全球引发了寻找替代中国制造的浪潮。

Few nations, if any, have benefited more than Vietnam from the scramble that followed — especially north Vietnam, historically an economic laggard compared to the more cosmopolitan south. Around Haiphong, a few hours’ drive from China, factories bloomed. The LG plant expanded exponentially; the industrial park nearby filled up with Chinese companies adding production abroad. Rural hamlets like Mr. Van Thinh’s — once known for little more than rice fields and dreams — grew almost overnight into boom towns of 30,000.

没有几个国家（如果有的话）比越南从随后的争抢中获益更多，而越南北方受益尤其多，与更加国际化的南方相比，这里在历史上经济落后。在距离中国几个小时车程的海防市，工厂如雨后春笋般冒了出来。LG工厂呈指数级扩大；附近的工业园区里，到处都是增加海外生产的中国公司。像范文盛所在的小村庄以前除了稻田和梦想几乎什么都没有，差不多在一夜之间，这里变成了有着3万人口的繁荣小镇。

海防附近的许多小村庄已几乎一夜之间变成了人口上3万的发达镇子。现年73岁的范文盛（音）谈起新工厂时说，“这让我高兴。所有这些年轻人，他们有了更好的生活。”

Will another Trump term impede or accelerate that growth? No one knows.

特朗普的下一个总统任期会阻碍还是加速这种发展？没人知道。

Mr. Trump has vowed to punish countries that have large trade surpluses with the United States, and Vietnam now ranks third on that list, behind only China and Mexico. Officials in Hanoi say they worry about “discrimination” — that Vietnam will be singled out for tariffs while competitors avoid Mr. Trump’s blacklist.

特朗普已发誓要惩罚那些对美国有巨大贸易顺差的国家，越南目前在这个名单上排第三，仅次于中国和墨西哥。河内的官员们说，他们担心“歧视”，意思是越南会被挑出来作为征收关税的对象，而竞争对手则可以避开特朗普的黑名单。

South Korean companies (including LG and Samsung) are Vietnam’s biggest foreign investors, and some have already paused expansion plans, waiting on Washington.

韩国公司（包括LG和三星）是越南最大的外国投资者，一些公司已暂停了扩张计划，它们在观望华盛顿下一步的行动。

Still, some analysts exude confidence, saying Vietnam will continue to flourish if Mr. Trump slaps far higher tariffs on China than on other countries, as he has threatened.

尽管如此，一些分析人士仍信心十足，他们说，如果特朗普像他威胁的那样，对中国征收比其他国家高得多的关税，越南将继续繁荣。

No matter what happens next, America’s once-and-future president can safely say he helped make north Vietnam great again. For the first time since France’s 19th-century rule of Vietnam from Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, the north has become Vietnam’s economic engine and gateway to the world. It leads the country in the value of exports going out, and foreign investment flowing in.

无论接下来发生什么，这名曾经的和未来的美国总统都可以有把握地说，他帮助越南北方恢复了伟大荣光。自从19世纪法国统治越南以来（那时的首都是现在叫胡志明市的西贡），北方第一次成为越南的经济引擎和通往世界的门户。北方的出口额和引进外国投资额在全国领先。

“The balance of power between these two regions has shifted radically,” said Vu Thanh Tu Anh, an economist at the Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management in Ho Chi Minh City. “It shows up in all the statistics.”

“南北之间的力量平衡已发生了根本性的变化，”位于胡志明市的富布赖特公共政策与管理学院的经济学家武清图安（音）说。“这表现在所有的统计数据中。”

The north’s transformation, while driven in part by geography and local politics, also highlights how trade weaponization by great powers is rearranging the global economy. Industrialization is spreading to new places at a faster clip, with local fortunes defined not just by competitive advantages such as productivity, but also by distant leaders fighting for supremacy, picking winners and losers.

北方的转型虽然在一定程度上受到了地理和当地政治的推动，但也凸显了大国将贸易武器化的过程正在如何重组全球经济。工业化正以更快的速度向新的地方扩展，本地的命运不仅取决于生产力等竞争优势，也取决于远方的领导人争夺霸权、挑选赢家和输家。

Put another way, the “wisdom of crowds” and markets is giving way to the whims of mercurial men — with reverberations that reach into distant nations and villages.

换句话说，“群体的智慧”和市场正在让位于反复无常的掌权者的突发奇想——其影响波及遥远的国家和村庄。

From China to Vietnam

从中国到越南

In Asia, where national economies are more integrated with fewer trade barriers than almost anywhere else, what Mr. Trump started with tariffs, the pandemic advanced.

在亚洲，各国经济的一体化程度更高，贸易壁垒比几乎任何地区都低，特朗普用关税开启的变化在新冠病毒大流行期间进一步扩大。

Faith in China was shaken as its government resisted investigations into Covid-19’s origins and responded to the virus with strict lockdowns and factory shutdowns. That led many governments to get more involved in weening supply chains from Chinese dominance.

由于中国政府拒绝了独立的新冠病毒溯源调查，并用严格封控和关闭工厂来应对疫情，世界对中国的信心产生动摇。这导致许多国家的政府更主动地介入，试图把供应链从中国的主导地位中摆脱出来。

Japan, for example, created a fund in 2020 to help companies diversify from China. South Korea expanded efforts to help businesses build ties to India and Southeast Asia through its “New Southern Policy,” while American and European officials have pressured companies (and their Asian suppliers) to “de-risk” from China.

例如，日本在2020年设立了一个基金，帮助企业在中国以外的地方实现供应商多元化。韩国出台了“新南方政策”，加大力度帮助企业与印度和东南亚建立联系。美国和欧洲国家的官员则向企业（以及它们的亚洲供应商）施压，要求它们在中国问题上“去风险”。

Vietnam has been a huge winner. Of the roughly 120 Japanese companies using government diversification subsidies, over 50 claimed them for Vietnam, more than any other country, according to Japanese officials.

越南已成为一个巨大的赢家。据日本官员称，在约120家使用了政府多元化补贴的日本公司中，有50多家申请补贴的理由是转向越南，比其他任何国家都多。

LG, the South Korean multinational, recently sold its last two screen display factories in China after adding production around Haiphong.

韩国跨国公司LG增加了海防附近的生产后，最近出售了在中国的最后两家显示器工厂。

海防LG工厂的工人下班了。海防市DEEP C工业园的一家在建厂房。随着各大企业将生产转移出中国，越南已成为巨大赢家。

A Taiwanese electronics supplier has begun producing network devices for Elon Musk’s Starlink system at a factory about 60 miles from Haiphong.

台湾的一家电子产品供应商已开始在距海防约100公里的工厂为埃隆·马斯克的星链系统生产网络设备。

They are part of a larger trend. Between 2017 and 2023, foreign investors committed $248.3 billion to Vietnam for 19,701 projects, according to an analysis by Le Hong Hiep, coordinator of the Vietnam studies program at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. That’s more than half of all foreign investment since Vietnam opened its economy in the late 1980s.

这些是更大趋势的一部分。据新加坡尤索夫伊萨东南亚研究院越南研究项目协调员黎鸿协（音）的分析，从2017年到2023年，外国投资者对越南的19701个项目承诺投资额为2483亿美元，相当于越南自20世纪80年代末开放经济以来所有外国投资的一半以上。

Vietnam’s growing trade surplus with the United States — reaching $104 billion last year, up from $38 billion in 2017 — has led to accusations that China uses Vietnam as a warehouse, rerouting its products to avoid tariffs. Chinese imports and investment have soared.

越南对美国的贸易顺差不断扩大——去年达到了1040亿美元，远高于2017年的380亿美元，这已经导致有人指责中国为躲避关税将越南作为改变产品输出地的仓库。中国对越南的出口和投资已猛增。

But in a country as wary of its neighbor as Vietnam, where 1,000 years of Chinese colonization lingers in national memory, the boom is by no means owned or operated by Beijing. From Vietnam’s economic opening in the 1980s through 2023, mainland China was the sixth-largest foreign investor in the country. With Hong Kong included, it was only fourth, after South Korea, Japan and Singapore.

但在对邻国（中国曾对越南实行上千年的殖民统治，那段历史仍存留在这个国家的记忆中）如此警惕的越南，这种繁荣并非完全由北京带来或者由它所操控。从越南20世纪80年代开放经济到2023年的这段时间里，中国大陆只是越南的第六大外国投资者。如果将香港包括进来，中国也仅排在第四位，次于韩国、日本和新加坡。

A recent Harvard Business School study showed that illegal tariff avoidance was more rare than the trade imbalance might suggest — representing between 1.8 and 16.1 percent of exports to the United States in 2021.

哈佛商学院最近的一项研究显示，规避关税的非法行为比贸易不平衡说明的更为罕见，占2021年对美国出口的1.8%到16.1%。

Researchers found that most exporters were making new products with inputs from many locations and local investment, not just relabeling Chinese products as Vietnamese.

研究人员发现，大多数出口商在使用来自多个地方和当地的投资制造新产品，而不只是将中国产品重新贴上越南制造的标签。

Haiphong’s Leap Forward

海防的跃进

“No winners” come from a U.S.-China trade war, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, declared last week in a meeting with global financiers. North Vietnam’s experience suggests otherwise.

中国领导人习近平上周会见主要国际经济组织负责人时宣称，中美贸易战“不会有赢家”。越南北方的经历暗示并非如此。

In 1954, after separating from France to become an independent nation, it was one of the poorest and least-developed countries in Asia, relying almost entirely on subsistence farming.

越南在1954年摆脱法国殖民统治，成为一个独立国家后，曾是亚洲最贫穷、最不发达的国家之一，经济几乎完全依赖自给农业。

Haiphong, the north’s main port, was pounded by the U.S. military with some of the heaviest bombing raids of the war, and in the decade after unification in 1975, all of Vietnam became what one scholar called “a poverty-stricken society beset by a stagnant economy.”

海防是越南北方的主要港口，美军曾对这里进行过几次越战期间最猛烈的轰炸。在1975年南北统一后的十年里，越南全境都变成了学者所谓的“一个经济停滞不前的贫困社会”。

Today, double-digit growth rates in the north are the norm, and Haiphong is a modern metropolis of two million people connected to Hanoi by a new highway. Cranes swing like weather vanes above more than a dozen construction sites. New bridges cross a river twisting through the city, where piers at industrial parks help ships move to one of the busiest ports in the world.

如今在越南北方，两位数的增长率已是常态，海防也成了一座拥有200万人口的现代化大都市，建起了一条通往河内的新高速公路。十多个建筑工地上的起重机像风向标那样来回摆动。从城市蜿蜒穿过的河上架起了新桥，船只从工业园区的河边码头驶向世界上最繁忙的港口之一。

海防老港。海防港现在是世界上最繁忙的港口之一。流经海防的河上建了新桥。

Bruno Jaspaert, chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam and the chief executive of DEEP C, which runs industrial parks around Haiphong, said the waterway was just one regional advantage. Northern provinces have also had leaders better connected to Hanoi, yielding more infrastructure investment, plus more open, affordable land.

欧洲商会越南分会主席、DEEP C工业园首席执行官布鲁诺·贾斯帕特表示，水路只是该地区的一个优势。DEEP C工业园位于海防附近。北方省份还有与河内联系更紧密的领导人，因此能得到更多的基础设施投资，以及更开阔、更廉价的土地。

Compared to the south, where an industrial base left over from the war made it easier for companies like Nike to get going in the 1990s, Mr. Jaspaert said the north “started later, they can plan better and they are also much faster.”

越南南方有战争前遗留下来的工业基础，使耐克等公司能在1990年代更容易从南方起步，贾斯帕特说。与南方相比，北方“开始的比较晚，让他们能更好地计划，更快地发展”。

Pointing out the window of his office to Haiphong’s new city hall, surrounded by new apartment complexes, he emphasized that none of that was there when he moved to Vietnam in 2018.

他指着办公室窗外的海防新市政厅强调说，他2018年刚到越南时，新市政厅和周边的新建公寓大楼都不存在。

Northern Vietnam was already growing then, in a country that lifted 40 million people out of poverty from 1993 to 2014. But American tariffs became an economic accelerant — lighter fluid poured on a steady flame. And in the north, an epicenter of ancient Vietnamese civilization and Communist revolution, government officials’ quick action coincided with foreign investors’ own sense of capitalist urgency.

当时，越南北方已开始发展，这个国家曾在1993年到2014年间让4000万人摆脱了贫困。但美国的关税成了越南经济发展的催化剂，像是火上浇油一般。北部是越南古代文明和共产主义革命的中心，北方政府官员的迅速行动与外国投资者本身的资本急迫感不谋而合。

Mr. Jaspaert said production decisions that once took 18 to 24 months now take six to nine. And while the south stagnates somewhat (Ho Chi Minh City’s subway line remains incomplete after 20 years of construction), the north races on.

贾斯帕特说，过去需要18到24个月的生产决策，现在只需六到九个月就能做出。虽然南方已有点停滞（胡志明市的地铁线已建设了20年，仍未完工），但北方正在飞速发展。

DEEP C工业园的首席执行官布鲁诺·贾斯帕特说，越南北方与南方相比有许多商业优势。海防的一个工业园。贾斯帕特说，与南方相比，北部“开始的更晚，他们能更好地规划，也能更快地发展”。

DEEP C’s revenues and profits have quintupled since the Trump tariffs.

自从特朗普加征关税以来，DEEP C工业园的收入和利润增长了五倍。

Villages like Mr. Van Thinh’s have been transformed.

像范文盛住的地方那样，附近的村庄已发生了变化。

When the LG plant expanded in 2019, the narrow streets of nearby hamlets quickly turned into commercial strips with restaurants and bold-colored barbershops for workers who make a solid local wage of around $400 to $550 a month.

LG工厂2019年扩建后，附近小村庄的狭窄街道很快变成了商业街，餐馆和门面色彩鲜艳的理发店林立，顾客多是工人，他们有对当地来说稳定的收入，每月工资约合400至550美元。

Every spare piece of land has been turned into worker housing. Mr. Van Thinh now manages 35 rooms with his family. Nearby, Pham Thi Cham, 55, drained a backyard pond where she raised fish to build eight rooms that she rents out for about $60 a month.

每块闲置的土地上都已建起了工人住房。范文盛现在和家人一起管着35个房间。他家附近住着现年55岁的范氏箴（音），她排干了后院养鱼池塘的水，盖了八间房，以每月约 合60美元的租金将房间出租。

Many of the workers come from central Vietnam. Instead of going south, they came north.

许多工人来自越南中部。他们没有去南方，而是来了北方。

Tran Van Sy, 26, a quiet young man in a knockoff Givenchy T-shirt, arrived three years ago from a poor coastal province to work for LG. He said he lives frugally enough to send 60 percent of his pay back home.

穿着冒牌纪梵希T恤衫的陈文希（音）现年26岁，不爱言语，三年前他从一个贫穷的沿海省份来到LG工厂打工。他说，自己过得很节俭，把工资的60%寄回老家。

It’s a story repeated up and down the halls of boardinghouses with sneakers by the doors and motorbikes parked outside.

这样的故事在出租房的过道里不断重复，这些房子的门里摆着运动鞋，门外停放着摩托车。

离LG厂区不远的繁忙地带的一家理发馆。工厂附近的每块闲置土地上都建起了供工人居住的房子。

Mr. Van Thinh said all nine of his grandchildren were studying at universities or working at factories.

范文盛说，他的九个孙子辈或在大学读书，或在工厂打工。

“I never could have imagined this,” he said.

“这是我从未想象到的，”他说。

Now, with defiant exuberance, he can’t imagine the progress stopping.

现在，他充满信心，无法想象这种进步会停止。

He emphasized that he trusted his government to keep manufacturing healthy, adding pressure for leaders in Hanoi.

他强调说，他相信政府将保持制造业的健康发展。这种期待让越南领导人面临的压力增加。

Plus, would Mr. Trump really crush a boom outside China that he helped create?

再说，特朗普真会毁掉他帮助在中国以外创造的繁荣吗？

“Everything is going so well,” Mr. Van Thinh said, staring at the hazy lights of the LG factory. “These companies, they’ll continue to expand.”

“所有的事情都在这么好地发展，”范文盛凝视着LG工厂朦胧的灯光说。“这些公司，它们将继续扩张。”