Vietnamese President To Lam said his nation is “very close” to a trade deal with the U.S. as he pledged to buy more high-tech goods like aircraft to narrow the trade gap ahead of talks with U.S. administration officials in New York, Bloomberg News reported. “One of the issues we need to discuss with U.S. leaders, particularly the U.S. president, is how to expedite negotiations toward an agreement on reciprocal, balanced and equitable tariffs between the two countries,” Lam, Vietnam’s top leader, said in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Monday.

A year after President Trump set out to rewire global trade in America’s favor, the biggest winner has turned out to be Vietnam, the Wall Street Journal reported. For the first half of this year, federal data shows Vietnam’s trade surplus with the U.S. hit $114 billion, ahead of semiconductor hub, Taiwan, Mexico, and even China. It is an unexpected outcome for an economy a quarter the size of Mexico’s, and the result of years of reconciliation after the Vietnam War and turbocharged capitalist development in the Communist nation.

Vietnam faces higher U.S. tariffs than peers and risks a further erosion of competitiveness in the clothing sector, as the largest exporter of apparel to the ​U.S. is excluded from a mechanism that could cut U.S. duties on ‌some textile imports, Retuers reported. The decision, included in a Federal Register notice published on Thursday, could impact the supply chains of major apparel brands with large manufacturing bases in Vietnam. Among top investors in Vietnam are ​Nike, Gap, Ralph Lauren and Under Armour.