Which Manufacturing Categories India and Vietnam Each Win

Vietnam's own press said it plainly in July 2019, just before the EU-Vietnam trade deal took effect. Its garment makers couldn't use the deal yet, because "Most of them have just engaged in cutting and sewing steps while not producing fabric and yarn," and the fabric came from mainland China and Taiwan, neither of which has a deal with the EU (Viet Nam News, 15 Jul 2019 (opens in a new tab)). We haven't found a better one-line description of Vietnamese manufacturing.

It's a world-class assembler that imports most of what it assembles.

This page is for you if you're leaving China, or adding a second country, and India and Vietnam are both on the shortlist. We compare them on what each is good at, what they pay in duty and where their inputs come from. We won't declare a winner, and we'll be upfront about one limit - SourcingFrom's operator knowledge is built around India, so for Vietnam we lean on trade data and official sources, and the list of things we haven't found is longer than we'd like. Anything that would only repeat what other sites say, we've cut.

Which Categories Each Country Leads

Want to see how different the two countries are? Look at who the US actually buys from. It's the best test we have, because the US is the biggest importer of both and it reports clearly. Here are the shares of US import value in 2025, as the importer recorded them.

Source: UN Comtrade, US as reporter, 2025, our analysis. Verified arithmetic. The UK tells the same story in the lines we checked - Vietnam has 29.2% of footwear and India 4.8%, while India has 15.7% of castings and 11.5% of bed linen against 0.1% for Vietnam.

So what does it tell you? First, the two countries are strong in different places. If your product is shoes, furniture or fast-turnover apparel then Vietnam already has the depth and India doesn't, and if it's cast metal, gears, home textiles or rugs then it's the other way round.

Second, the overlap is narrow. Apparel and electronics are the only two groups where both sell in volume, and Vietnam is ahead in the US in both today. Third, the table shows where each country is, not where it's going. India's share of US electronics was 0.6% in 2019, so the trend matters as much as the snapshot, and India's side of that story is on why source from India.

One caveat on all of it. These are importer-recorded shares for one market, which means they show what has been proven at scale and not what a supplier could do for you tomorrow. If your product sits where the other country leads, treat that as a prompt to test, not a ban.

Where Each Country Gets Its Inputs

Go back to that 2019 line for a second. Vietnam is strong at finishing, and its raw materials are largely imported. A January 2026 industry overview put domestic fabric output at about 2.3 billion metres a year, "satisfying 25 to 30 percent of the domestic demand", and said Vietnam uses around 400,000 tonnes of cotton but sources only 3,000 tonnes at home (Vietnam Briefing, 7 Jan 2026 (opens in a new tab), Reported). The same piece says most fibre comes from India, China and the US.

Customs data backs that up, and it threw up something we didn't expect. Of the roughly US$218 million of cotton yarn Vietnam reported importing in 2023, India supplied 42.9% and China 38.6% (UN Comtrade, Viet Nam as reporter, our pull). India's own 2025 export record shows US$125 million of cotton yarn going to Vietnam, which is 3.9% of India's cotton yarn exports (UN Comtrade, India as reporter).

So if you buy a Vietnamese cotton garment, there's a fair chance some of its yarn was spun in India.

India grows cotton and spins it, so it can run the whole chain at home, and that helps you in two ways. Traceability is easier because the chain is shorter, and the cotton traceability guide shows how to check it. Duty is the other one, because whether the fabric is local decides whether a trade agreement applies at all - which takes us to the next section.

Duty by Destination

Duty is where the two countries have moved most in the last year, and the picture changes with the market. Here's where it stood on 5 October 2026 -

United States

From 24 July 2026 India pays 10% and Vietnam 12.5% on top of the normal rate, under the Section 301 forced-labour action. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico and others sit in the 10% group with India, and China is at 12.5% with Vietnam (91 FR 47318 (opens in a new tab)). That's a small edge for India, 2.5 points, and the rate has no end date. Our US page has the full stack and the dates.

United Kingdom

Vietnam left the UK's developing-country scheme for its own free trade agreement in January 2023 (GOV.UK (opens in a new tab)). India has had 0% under CETA since 15 July 2026 with a valid origin proof, as our UK page sets out. Both can reach zero in the UK, so the difference is the paperwork and the origin test.

European Union

Vietnam has its own free trade agreement with the EU. The 2019 reporting described apparel duty phasing out from the normal 12% to zero over three to seven years, which would put the last lines at zero around 2027 (Viet Nam News, 2019, Reported, and we haven't confirmed the current schedule). The catch for apparel was the origin rule. Fabric had to originate in Vietnam or the EU, which is why the press said most garment makers couldn't use the deal at first. India has the lower GSP rate on knitwear and woven apparel today, and its own FTA is concluded but not yet in force (EU page).

Australia

India is at 0% under ECTA with a certificate of origin (Australia page). We haven't read Vietnam's current Australian treatment, so we won't guess at it.

On duty the two are close to level in the UK, close in the US, and Vietnam has the older agreement in the EU. Where each of India's agreements stands is on one page. For any single product, though, the answer is a lookup and not a country rule, and how to work out import duty walks you through it.

Price Per Piece and Why the Mix Matters

On cotton T-shirts, India's declared value per piece is 30% to 50% below Vietnam's in every market we checked for 2025. The US shows India 30% below, the UK 43%, Australia 47% and the EU 50% (Eurostat, HMRC, UN Comtrade, 2025, our arithmetic on customs values). Sweatshirts are less tidy, with the gap running from 3% below in Australia to 50% below in the EU for the men's version.

Does that make India half the price? Not quite. Customs values mix products together, and Vietnam's EU sweatshirt exports are declared at about twice the value of India's, which looks like a mix of higher-spec, branded or technical garments that we can't pull apart from price in the data. If you're making a plain tee then India's number is a fair signal, but for performance wear it isn't a like-for-like comparison. Run your own spec through the landed cost calculator instead of trusting any country-level average.

Factory Size and Certification

Brand disclosures give us the only factory-level comparison there is, and the samples are small. Primark's file lists 16 Vietnamese factories averaging about 815 workers, against 105 Indian ones averaging about 700 (Primark Global Sourcing Map, Nov 2025, counts only). H&M's supplier list has 90 Vietnamese factories against 220 Indian ones (H&M Group public supplier list, Aug 2026, our count). We'd read that as "similar average size", but it's Indicative at best, because brand lists show who brands use and not who exists, and 16 factories is a thin sample.

Certification is a clearer story. India holds 27.8% of the world's GOTS-certified facilities and Vietnam 0.9% (GOTS Annual Report 2025 (opens in a new tab)), which fits the input picture, since India grows the organic cotton and certified supply sits close to its mills. The ILO's Better Work programme runs in Vietnam and not in India (Better Work (opens in a new tab), read 25 Sep 2026), and that matters if your retail customer asks for it.

How Buyers Are Moving

On the forums, the China+1 shift looks partial and messy. In April 2025 a US Amazon seller wrote that "the professionalism and on time performance is unmatched on the Chinese end. In the meanwhile, we've shifted to Indian suppliers for some of our goods" (r/FulfillmentByAmazon, Apr 2025 (opens in a new tab)). A year later another said they had "moved to mostly Vietnam and Cambodia" (r/FulfillmentByAmazon, Apr 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Both are single voices and some of it reads as promotional, so treat them as Reported at best.

What they agree on is that nobody moved everything. The pattern in our guide is some products to India, some to Vietnam and China kept for the rest (China+1 guide).

That lines up with the first table. Shoe and furniture buyers have gone to Vietnam because the factories are there, and buyers of castings, home textiles and rugs have gone to India for exactly the same reason. The ones having a hard time are in the middle, buying apparel or electronics where both countries sell, and for them the order you test in matters more than any comparison page (this one included).

Which Country for Which Product

Here's how we'd decide, as of today -

Lean to Vietnam if your product is footwear, furniture or high-turnover apparel with technical fabrics, and you want a supplier base that's already used to Western brand audits. Do check where the fabric comes from before you assume a trade agreement applies.

Lean to India if your product is cast or forged metal, gears, bed and bath linen, rugs, or cotton basics where certified or organic fibre is part of your story. That goes double if you sell into the UK or Australia, where duty is now zero. India's manufacturing clusters show which town makes what.

Test both if your product is apparel or electronics. Order small from one factory in each country, with the same spec and Incoterm, and compare landed cost and quality side by side. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on either side, SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) can check factories and manage the pilot.

Which takes us back to 2019. Vietnam cuts and sews and imports much of its cotton yarn, some of it from India, while India grows, spins, weaves and finishes at home. Neither is a copy of China, so pick the one whose gaps your product can live with. For the other big comparison, see India vs China, and for the Bangladesh question in garments, India vs Bangladesh.