French President Emmanuel Macron has arrived in Vietnam’s Hanoi today, in a sign of how important South East Asia is becoming to Europe.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Vietnam’s capital today for a high-stakes state visit, ushering in a flurry of diplomatic and business activity as France seeks to reassert its influence in Southeast Asia. His first formal trip to the country — and the first by a French head of state in nearly a decade — carries symbolic and strategic weight as global trade tensions flare anew.
Touching down in Hanoi on a humid Monday morning, Macron’s motorcade swept through tree-lined boulevards steeped in French colonial architecture, before — as many here speculate — arriving discreetly at the city’s most storied address: the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel. The opulent retreat, once a haunt of Graham Greene and Charlie Chaplin, has long served as a quiet stage for diplomacy — and perhaps now, another chapter of Franco-Vietnamese relations.
Macron is not traveling alone. Accompanying him are more than a dozen French business leaders, signaling Paris’s intent to deepen commercial ties in sectors ranging from aviation and rail to nuclear energy and renewables. French officials have said up to 30 agreements could be signed during the visit, underscoring France’s ambitions in a region increasingly caught between great power rivalries.
His visit comes at a precarious moment. Just days ago, U.S. President Donald Trump reignited trade tensions with the European Union, threatening to impose sweeping 50% tariffs on EU goods by June. At the same time, Vietnam, which relies heavily on exports to the U.S., faces its own dilemma: Washington is pressing Hanoi to boost American imports or face punishing tariffs — as high as 46% — that could disrupt its fast-growing economy.
French and EU officials, alarmed by Vietnam’s overtures to Washington, have quietly warned Hanoi to tread carefully. “Vietnam should make sure not to make decisions at the expense of European interests,” one European diplomat based in Hanoi told Reuters. The underlying message: cozying up too tightly to the U.S. could imperil the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement and strain political goodwill with Brussels and Paris alike.
Whether Macron delivers that message explicitly in Monday’s meetings with Vietnam’s top leaders remains to be seen. Much may depend on the outcome of commercial negotiations currently underway.
Among the most closely watched is a potential deal between low-cost Vietnamese carrier VietJet and European aerospace giant Airbus. Talks reportedly center around the formalization of a provisional agreement signed last year for the purchase of 20 A330neo wide-body aircraft. Discussions on satellite cooperation, also involving Airbus, are said to be advancing as well.
For France, these deals are about more than economics. They’re a strategic counterweight to China’s growing influence in the region, a gesture of solidarity with a key trading partner, and an attempt to re-anchor France in a part of the world it once ruled as part of Indochina.
Meanwhile, on the American side, Vietnam has dangled the possibility of acquiring up to 250 aircraft from Boeing — a gesture seen as an olive branch to Washington and a bid to offset its trade surplus with the U.S.
Navigating these crosscurrents will require deft diplomacy. Macron, who has branded himself a statesman of Europe’s strategic autonomy, arrives in Hanoi with both the historical gravitas of France’s colonial past and the pragmatic urgency of a modern trade envoy.
For now, his presence at the Sofitel Metropole — where wrought-iron balconies overlook a courtyard once used for diplomatic powwows — signals more than just luxury. It hints at a new chapter in Franco-Vietnamese relations, written at the crossroads of tradition, strategy, and the shifting tectonics of global trade.
