Despite some impressive recovery momentum in July, however, many key import-export commodity groups declined in the first half of August.

Trade secretary Liz Truss will next week outline her plan to broker a UK-Australia trade deal that scraps tariffs for cars, clothing and spirits.

Business communities of India and ASEAN should work to resolve their differences, remove non-tariff barriers, ensure sanctity of rules of origin and open markets to expand two-way trade, Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said on August 27.

Vietnam and the United States celebrated 25 years of diplomatic relations in July this year – a testament to improving bilateral and economic ties since the Vietnam War. Vietnam has emerged as an ideal alternative manufacturing destination to China for US businesses, in part due to the US-China trade war and disrupted supply chains due to the coronavirus pandemic. Vietnam Briefing discusses trends in the Vietnam-US relationship, growing economic ties, and how US businesses can leverage and benefit from moving their production to Vietnam.

Ministers from 15 Asia-Pacific countries negotiating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement on August 27 said they have made "significant progress" toward the signing of the deal by the end of the year, while whether India will stay on as a member of the framework remains uncertain.

Vietnamese firms regardless of their scale need to get up to speed on digital transformation to enable them to further penetrate global markets, a webinar heard on August 26.

The US and China are moving ahead with the phase one trade deal, with officials from both countries speaking on the phone to review its progress. The development has eased concerns that deteriorating bilateral relations would impact the agreement and potentially ignite another trade war.

As many as 50 UK businesses joined an online meeting to get updates on socio-economic situation in Vietnam as well as developments in the Vietnam-UK relations, and seek opportunities to cooperate with Vietnamese partners in the future.

The United States Trade Representative has just made a sharp reversal, declaring that the traditional model of trade liberalization—working with like-minded countries—was dead, and asserting countries instead should seek free-trade agreements only with their neighbors.

The previous 25 years have witnessed Vietnam and ASEAN simultaneously being both "rivals" and "partners", in terms of being competitors when trying to attract investment, but also working together to achieve joint goals