But Trump’s tariffs were not the issue for Vietnamese fruit farmers, who sold only around 5 per cent of their produce to the US, said Nguyen, the secretary general of the country’s fruit association (Vinafruit). Instead, it is a lack of cold-chain infrastructure to get more fruits into China, the farmers’ biggest market, before they go bad.
Such an upgrade in the transport infrastructure would help speed up the time to get Vietnam’s fresh fruits to Chinese supermarket shelves, Nguyen said.
“Our railways and roads are not well connected; our ports are being developed,” Nguyen told This Week in Asia.
“The proposed railroad projects open up many possibilities. If Vietnam can meet the quality standards of China’s market, we have the potential to dominate it,” he said, particularly durians.
