From January 19 to 23, 2026, the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam took place in Hanoi—the most important political event in the state, which determines its domestic and foreign policy course for the five-year period.
Based on its outcomes, To Lam was unanimously elected as the party’s general secretary, who had temporarily held this position after the death of General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (2011-2024).
At the same time, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, Deputy Prime Ministers Tran Hong Ha and Nguyen Hoa Binh, as well as President Luong Kuong, were not nominated for reelection, completing their terms.
It is believed that as a result, To Lam has also become the sole candidate for the position of President of Vietnam, with formal elections scheduled for spring 2026.
Traditionally, Vietnam’s political system was based on a balance of power among four supreme leaders (“four pillars”): the general secretary of the Communist Party, the President, the Prime Minister, and the chairman of the National Assembly.
The formal combination of the positions of general secretary and President in one person will transform To Lam into the most influential communist leader in the country’s modern history, essentially equating him in status to Xi Jinping, who also simultaneously heads the party and the state.
The consolidation of To Lam—a former Minister of Public Security—as the central figure in the party-state hierarchy signifies a significant shift in the balance of power within the Communist Party of Vietnam’s system.
If from 2011 to 2024 the state’s strategic course was shaped under the dominant influence of the military-conservative environment, focused on strict ideological stability and strategic ties with China and Russia, now key positions have shifted to the police faction—a political group formed around To Lam’s closest entourage.
This faction, nurtured within the Ministry of Public Security system, bets on strict centralization of decision-making and a pragmatic, transactional approach in foreign policy, viewing communist ideology more as a facade for preserving the interests of Vietnam’s political elites.
At the same time, its tactical ally in the process of displacing military-conservatives from the center of political coordination was the so-called “southern group”—a minority but influential faction that has historically oriented toward economic liberalization and expanding ties with the United States.
For the Donald Trump administration, such a transformation in Vietnam’s domestic political dynamics is a positive signal.
Moving away from ideological dogmas, the new leadership of the Communist Party increasingly views autocratic regimes less as an unconditional geopolitical support.
It now prefers transactional agreements with democratic states, in light of the need to accelerate economic development and reduce the level of Chinese expansive threat, particularly in the South China Sea.
Under such conditions, Vietnam consistently strengthens its positions as an alternative manufacturing base for Western economies and will deepen diversification in defense procurement, gradually reducing dependence on Russian and Chinese platforms in favor of technologies from the USA, France, Israel, South Korea, and Japan.
This creates space for To Lam to engage in diplomatic and economic maneuvers necessary to channel external capitals—including autocratic ones—into a direction compatible with Vietnam’s long-term development goals.
In this sense, his management style will increasingly resemble the approach of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While maintaining significant trade and production exchanges with China and Russia, Modi simultaneously systematically deepens strategic interaction with the United States and its allies in case of a large-scale clash in the Indo-Pacific.
After reaching a preliminary agreement to reduce US tariffs on Vietnamese goods to 20%, the Donald Trump administration expects to proceed to concluding a broad trade agreement with Vietnam, which will solidify Hanoi’s long-term anti-Chinese commitments regarding supply chains.
So far, the key obstacle to advancing negotiations has been the replacement of leading negotiators on the Vietnamese side in connection with preparations for the national congress of the Communist Party, as well as the rotation of the US ambassador in Hanoi.
However, after the institutional strengthening of To Lam’s power and the assumption of the ambassadorial position by Jennifer Weeks McNamara—a career American diplomat with a mandate to reduce the trade deficit—the negotiation process will be activated. In a favorable development, its culmination should be To Lam’s visit to Washington by mid-2026.
A key confirmation of the pragmatic nature of To Lam’s leadership were his unprecedented domestic and foreign policy steps taken during his tenure as acting general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
After assuming the position in 2024, he initiated the largest administrative reform in the country’s modern history, reducing the number of levels in the management hierarchy by nearly half and about 150,000 positions in the state apparatus; at the same time, another 250,000 nomenclature representatives are to be reduced.
In parallel, a package of deregulatory changes in the investment sphere was launched, aimed at simplifying access for capital from democratic states and reducing political risks for foreign investors. In addition, he significantly expanded the autonomy of the private sector, defining it as the “most important factor” in national development.
A telling example of this approach was the January decision by the Viettel group—a corporation owned by Vietnam’s Ministry of Defense—to begin construction of the country’s first semiconductor manufacturing plant in Hanoi.
This project is part of a government program to create a full-fledged national infrastructure for research, design, testing, and production of microchips.
According to Viettel, Vietnam was involved in five out of six key stages of the semiconductor value chain, but until now had not mastered the most technologically complex and strategically critical segment—actual chip production.
The launch of this plant aims to close the full cycle of semiconductor microchip production within the country. Viettel plans to start pilot production by the end of 2027, and over the next three years focus on optimizing technological processes and achieving compliance with international industry standards.
In a strategic dimension, this step solidifies the formation of Hanoi’s production and trade positions alternative to China, which directly correlates with the foreign policy and economic interests of the United States.
Despite maintaining formal communist rhetoric, these reforms demonstrated the new leadership of Vietnam’s readiness to abandon ideological restrictions in favor of economic expediency.
A significant reflection of this shift was the revival of interest from American business circles close to the White House.
Starting in 2025, structures associated with the Trump family are implementing a series of recreational and infrastructure investment projects in the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh areas, which indirectly indicates a growing level of trust between American and Vietnamese political leadership.
At the same time, To Lam has established himself as one of the most active Vietnamese leaders on the international stage.
According to the 2013 Constitution of Vietnam, the President represents the state in external relations; the Prime Minister coordinates government foreign policy, including economic diplomacy and concluding international agreements; and the Communist Party, headed by the general secretary, de facto determines the strategic direction of the country’s external relations.
Historically, these functions remained separated: the president performed primarily a ceremonial role, the prime minister—an executive one, and the general secretary—a political-strategic one. Under To Lam’s leadership, this division has been significantly blurred.
By combining the functions of head of state and party leader, he has concentrated in his hands international representation, economic diplomacy, and strategic guidance of foreign policy.
If his predecessors in the position of general secretary limited active external contacts primarily to relations with the leadership of Laos, Cambodia, China, Russia, India, and Cuba, To Lam has significantly expanded the geography of Vietnamese diplomacy.
During 2025, he visited 16 countries, including the USA, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Ireland, and France. This was accompanied by an expansion in the number of strategic partnerships from 8 to 14.
The culmination of this atypical diplomatic vector for Hanoi was Vietnam’s accession to the “Council of Peace” initiated by the Donald Trump administration.
This step opens up for To Lam the opportunity to position himself as an international mediator in resolving both regional and extra-regional crises—from Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe.
In a broader context, Hanoi’s decision, made shortly after the American operation to liquidate the regime of Venezuelan usurper Nicolas Maduro, is additional evidence of To Lam’s departure from orthodox communist doctrine, according to which Vietnam should demonstrate unconditional solidarity with ideological allies, including Venezuela and Cuba.
Hanoi signals that in relations with the United States, there are no longer structural ideological restrictions formed during the dominance of Nguyen Phu Trong’s foreign policy line, and that the Communist Party of Vietnam will build its strategy independently of the narratives of the Communist Party of China.
The formal basis for such domestic and foreign policy steps is the official goal of the Communist Party of Vietnam to achieve the status of a “developed state” according to UN classification by 2045.
In particular, To Lam seeks to move away from an economic model focused exclusively on a broad supply of “cheap” labor and mastering foreign investments as an alternative manufacturing base, and to strengthen Vietnam’s own, non-fronting export, which directly depends on access to the markets of the USA, EU, and Japan.
Confirmation of this was To Lam’s promise during the National Congress to ensure the formation of a “new growth model,” which will be shaped by Vietnamese conglomerates.
Under To Lam’s leadership, Vietnam has already demonstrated significant economic results. The country’s stock market grew by nearly 40%, outperforming most markets in Southeast Asia, despite the negative impact of American tariffs and regular natural disasters.
In parallel, in 2025, Vietnam’s total trade turnover exceeded $920 billion for the first time, which is 16.9% more than in 2024, ensuring the country’s entry into the top 25 largest trading economies in the world.
At the same time, the United States retained the status of Vietnam’s main export market: the volume of Vietnamese goods supplied to the USA reached $153.2 billion, which is 28% more compared to 2024. This illustrates the effectiveness of Donald Trump’s tariff campaign.
Meanwhile, Vietnam remains structurally import-dependent on China: purchases of Chinese goods grew to $186 billion, which is 20% higher than the 2024 figure.
This asymmetry reflects To Lam’s balanced approach, who seeks to maintain and expand economic, including investment, ties with China within limits that will not undermine the conclusion and functioning of a full-scale “grand deal” with the United States.
American corporations are increasingly clearly taking into account the production-institutional conjuncture formed in Vietnam, viewing it as one of the most promising in Southeast Asia.
In mid-January 2026, the American corporation Alphabet decided to start the full cycle of development and production of high-end smartphones in Vietnam already during the current year.
This step mirrors Apple’s decision to transfer and test NPI (New Product Introduction—the full cycle of introducing a new product into production) processes for iPhone in India.
In particular, Google plans to conduct full NPI processes (introduction of new products into serial production) for the Pixel, Pixel Pro, and Pixel Fold lines precisely in Vietnam, despite the fact that development of the junior Pixel A series will remain focused in China for some time.
NPI (New Product Introduction) is an early stage of the product life cycle, at which a new device is first transitioned from an engineering project to scalable serial production with simultaneous validation of design, supply chain, and production infrastructure.
From a broader perspective, gaining such an advantage from American corporations will allow transitioning Vietnam’s economy from the status of an auxiliary manufacturing site to a full-fledged element of global value chains.
In the event of successful implementation of Google and Apple’s strategies for developing and scaling smartphone production in Vietnam, this will mean a qualitative breakthrough in the process of diversifying global supply chains with significant expansion of production and engineering capabilities outside Chinese jurisdiction.
This critical competitive potential is recognized by To Lam, which will directly influence the course of negotiations with Donald Trump during 2026.
Under such conjuncture, the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam fixed a structural reformatting of the entire model of state governance.
The concentration of party, state, and foreign policy power in one hands means the end of the era of balancing between factions and a transition to centralized, personalized adoption of strategic decisions by To Lam.
For Vietnam, this creates preconditions for faster adaptation to changes in the global economy and security environment in the Indo-Pacific, while generating risks of deteriorating the overall human rights situation.
A key consequence of this shift was the undeclared displacement of the ideological factor from Hanoi’s practical foreign policy. Under To Lam’s leadership, Vietnam will no longer tie its international subjectivity to solidarity with communist regimes, but builds relations based on economic expediency and long-term security benefits.
This is manifested both in the diversification of defense procurements and in the readiness to integrate into Western value chains at the most sensitive stages—from NPI to semiconductor production.
For the United States, Vietnam’s transformation means strengthening positions in relations with one of the most promising partners in Southeast Asia, capable of combining economic openness with controlled authoritarian governance.
From a simplified perspective, it is about scaling practices that were characteristic of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew’s rule.
In particular, Vietnam is gradually transforming from an alternative manufacturing base into a systemic element of anti-Chinese supply chain architecture, without declaring it publicly, but solidifying it in practice through trade, investment, and technological decisions. This corresponds to Donald Trump’s foreign policy strategy.
At the same time, To Lam’s model does not envision a sharp break with China. Maintaining deep import dependence on Chinese goods and investments indicates Hanoi’s desire to avoid confrontational logic and act within a controlled balance.
It is this caution that allows Vietnam to expand cooperation with the USA without provoking direct pressure from Beijing until the institutional completion of the “grand deal” with Washington.
