May 2, 2026, Hanoi. Sanae Takaichi touched down in the Vietnamese capital just over six months into her tenure as Japan's prime minister. A 50-minute summit, a foreign policy speech at Vietnam National University, and a joint document listing priority areas for economic security cooperation. One phrase ran through all of it: economic security.

The Middle East crisis squeezing Japan's oil supply. Beijing's rare-earth export controls. Pharmaceutical ingredients sourced almost entirely from China. Hanoi was the day Tokyo tried to address all three sore spots at once.

Ten years ago, the late Shinzo Abe stood up in Nairobi, Kenya and unveiled the "Free and Open Indo-Pacific" (FOIP) doctrine. In Hanoi, Takaichi set out what comes next.

What 50 Minutes Delivered

On May 2, Takaichi sat across from Vietnam's Prime Minister Le Minh Hung at the Government Office in Hanoi. The meeting ran roughly 50 minutes. According to the Nikkei's reporting from Hanoi, the two leaders agreed to cooperate on crude oil supply and on critical minerals such as rare earths in light of the Middle East situation.

Takaichi's opening remarks emphasized realizing and evolving the Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework, working bilaterally to make the region "stronger and more prosperous." Hung responded that Vietnam values Japan as "the most important strategic partner" and "a sincere and reliable friend."

The two leaders released a joint document setting out priority cooperation items in economic security and in science and technology. Energy, critical minerals, AI, semiconductors, and space were named as the new priority areas, with a cooperation memorandum on AI signed between Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology. On space, both sides agreed to expand satellite data use for disaster response and to build on the public-private business forum held in March.

That same day, Takaichi also met General Secretary and State President To Lam and National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man. The Japanese Foreign Ministry's readout confirmed both sides agreed to advance economic security cooperation, covering energy, critical minerals, AI, semiconductors and space, as a new pillar of Japan-Vietnam relations.

Who Is Le Minh Hung?

Knowing Takaichi's counterpart matters here. Le Minh Hung, 55, became Vietnam's 9th Prime Minister on April 7, 2026, when the National Assembly elected him unanimously, 495 votes out of 495. He replaced Pham Minh Chinh, who was excluded from the new Central Committee.

Hung's biography reads as if scripted for a Japan visit. He holds a master's degree in economics and public policy from Saitama University, Japan, where he studied from October 1996 through September 1997. Before becoming Prime Minister, he served as Chairman of the Vietnam-Japan Friendship Parliamentarians' Group. In short: this is the most "Japan-fluent" leader the Communist Party of Vietnam has produced in years.

Professionally, Hung's resume is technocratic. He became Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam at 46, the youngest in the central bank's history. He oversaw monetary reforms during the Phuc cabinet from 2016 to 2020, then moved into senior Party positions. Under General Secretary and State President To Lam (who unusually holds both top posts), Hung is the technocrat tasked with delivering economic results, economic security cooperation with Tokyo now among them.

Takaichi's choice to fly to Hanoi within a month of Hung's inauguration was strategic. Before departing, she explicitly told reporters she wanted to "establish economic security as a new axis of cooperation" with Vietnam's "newly inaugurated leadership."

Vietnam's Rare-Earth Card

Behind the rare-earth language in today's communiqué sits Vietnam's geological potential.

The U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025, published in January of that year, places Vietnam's confirmed reserves at 3.5 million metric tons, sixth-largest globally, behind China (44 million), Brazil (21 million), India, Australia (5.7 million) and Russia. That is a steep downward revision: Vietnam previously sat at 22 million tons, ranked second in the world.

Even after the cut, the resource is substantial. The Dong Pao deposit in Lai Chau province, in northwestern Vietnam, is among the most significant rare-earth mineralizations outside China, with further deposits in Yen Bai and along the central coast.

The challenge is execution. The USGS puts Vietnam's 2024 output at roughly 300 tons of rare-earth oxide equivalent, flat against the prior year, while the national plan calls for processing 2 million tons of ore and producing 60,000 tons of oxides annually by 2030. Closing that gap requires foreign capital, refining technology, and an end to corruption cases such as the October 2023 arrests of six industry figures, among them the Vietnam Rare Earth (VTRE) chairman, who faced charges of forging value-added-tax invoices.

Roughly 1% of global magnet production currently happens in Vietnam, mostly through Chinese, Korean and American firms relocating capacity out of China. Apple supplier Baotou INST Magnetic began operations at a leased facility in northern Vietnam after clients asked it to diversify away from China, and South Korea's Star Group has invested $80 million in a magnet plant in Quang Nam province.

For Japan, this matters enormously. Japan still depends on China for nearly 100% of its dysprosium and terbium, the heavy rare earths that go into the neodymium magnets in EV motors. Vietnam is one of the very few alternative sources on the horizon. The Nikkei put it bluntly today: Vietnam is "one of the world's leading rare-earth holding countries," and the two governments have committed to public-private cooperation to strengthen the supply chain.

The Oil Deal Runs the Other Way

Crude oil was the summit's other headline, and the direction of the deal is the opposite of what most readers would assume. Japan is not buying Vietnamese oil. Japan is helping Vietnam buy oil.

The beneficiary is the Nghi Son refinery in north-central Vietnam, which has struggled to source crude since the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Tokyo agreed to back its purchases through Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI). It is the first project under "Power Asia," the Asian energy and resource supply resilience partnership Takaichi launched in April at an AZEC+ online leaders' meeting, a framework sized at roughly $10 billion in total financing.

Why would Japan underwrite a Vietnamese refinery? Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kei Sato told reporters after the summit that Vietnam is a critical node in regional supply chains, medical goods included. Japan imports petroleum-derived medical products from Vietnam, dialysis tubing among them. If the refinery stalls, supplies to Japanese hospitals thin out. Underwriting Vietnamese crude purchases is, in a roundabout way, Japan protecting its own supply chain.

Japan's own exposure is being handled on a separate track. More than 90% of its crude comes via the Middle East, and when the Hormuz situation turned ugly earlier in 2026, gasoline hit a record ¥190 per liter nationwide (about $1.21 at ¥156.5 to the dollar). The March 2026 US-Japan summit put Alaska crude expansion and joint strategic reserves on the table. Hanoi was a different instrument: intra-Asian mutual support rather than a new supply source.

The Evolution of FOIP

After the summit, Takaichi moved to Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) for a 25-minute foreign policy address. According to Japan's ambassador to Vietnam, Ito Naoki, it was the first policy speech a Japanese prime minister has given in Vietnam since 2020, a deliberately weighted choice of venue.

The speech's headline theme: the evolution of FOIP. Abe Shinzo introduced the concept in August 2016 at TICAD VI in Nairobi. In the decade since, the world has changed. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed supply-chain fragility. China's rare-earth export controls turned critical minerals into a geopolitical weapon. Middle East conflict reminded Japan how thin its energy buffer is.

Takaichi telegraphed the shift in her February 2026 policy speech to the Diet. She announced that the FOIP framework would be "strategically evolved" to mark the 10th anniversary of Abe's original concept, citing intensifying tech hegemony competition and growing geopolitical rivalry as reasons countries need stronger autonomy and resilience.

The Hanoi speech put numbers on that evolution. Per the Foreign Ministry readout, Takaichi named three focus areas for an evolved FOIP aimed at raising each country's autonomy and resilience: building an economic ecosystem for the AI and data era, including supply-chain resilience for energy and critical goods; public-private co-creation of new economic frontiers along with shared rules; and expanded security cooperation for regional peace and stability. She also argued that over-dependence on a single supplier persists because that supplier sells "unfairly cheap," and that fair competitive conditions beyond price are essential to any supply-chain fix. "Power Asia," which produced the Nghi Son deal, sits inside the same package.

How Japan's New FOIP Differs From US Friendshoring and EU Global Gateway

Three Western-led economic security frameworks are now competing, or coexisting, in the Indo-Pacific.

US "friendshoring" dates to 2022, when then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen used the term to describe sourcing critical inputs from "trusted" countries. Under the Trump administration, the policy has tilted further toward "reshoring" (bringing production back to the US itself), but the central goal, excluding China from semiconductor and rare-earth supply chains, remains. The defining feature is values-based separation, often coupled with tariffs and sanctions.

EU "Global Gateway" launched in December 2021 under Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as a €300 billion infrastructure investment initiative across digital, climate and energy, transport, education, and health. It positions itself as a developing-country alternative to China's Belt and Road, packaging infrastructure provision with regulatory and standards exports.

Japan's evolved FOIP (2026) sits in a distinctive position relative to these two:

  • Target audience: Where US friendshoring privileges close allies, Japan's FOIP centers on Southeast Asian middle powers: countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines that want to maintain working relationships with both China and the US. Japan offers cooperation tools without forcing a choice.

  • Military temperature: The US framework is tightly linked to AUKUS and QUAD. Japan's FOIP keeps military integration as a supplementary element, with economic diplomacy doing the heavy lifting.

  • Implementation style: Japan emphasizes layered, country-specific cooperation packages ("Power Asia," critical mineral MOUs, semiconductor supply-chain information sharing) bundled into a flexible architecture rather than one large initiative.

In philosophy Japan's FOIP is closer to the US, in implementation closer to the EU, but in target geography unique. It's the middle path: ASEAN-centered economic security diplomacy.

What Could Go Wrong

The strategy carries real risks worth naming.

Vietnam hedges. Hanoi has historically refused to be cast as anyone's pawn in great-power rivalry. A 2025 US announcement of a rare-earth deal was downplayed by Hanoi, which insisted the deal wasn't final. Today's Japan-Vietnam agreement should be understood the same way: one element in Vietnam's diversification, not an exclusive partnership.

Cost arithmetic. Chinese rare earths are cheap. Chinese pharmaceutical APIs are cheap. Diversification almost by definition costs more. Nomura Research Institute estimates that a three-month rare-earth import disruption would cost the Japanese economy roughly ¥660 billion (about $4.2 billion), and the price of insurance against that risk lands on industry. Japanese SMEs were already on edge during the January 2026 Chinese export-control announcement.

China's response. Beijing's January 2026 rare-earth export curbs against Japan are still in effect. The Hanoi agreement may invite further Chinese countermeasures, particularly if Beijing reads it as Japan deliberately recruiting ASEAN into a containment posture.

From Slogan to Contract

Abe's 2016 speech was an idea. Takaichi's 2026 speech, at its best, is an attempt to turn that idea into paperwork: a trade-insurance line for a refinery in Thanh Hoa is not stirring, but it is real.

Whether the evolved FOIP becomes a strategy or stays a slogan depends on what actually gets implemented. Space cooperation, AI, semiconductors, energy and critical minerals: every line item on the priority list runs on a multi-year timeline, some of them on a decade-long one.

How is your country thinking about supply-chain dependency on China? Where do you see your own government looking for diversification: Vietnam, Indonesia, India, somewhere else? And in the US-China rivalry, is "a third path that doesn't pick sides" a realistic option in your country's debate? We'd love to hear how this looks from where you are.

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