Foxconn’s Vietnam workers poached as hiring battle heats up amid US-China trade tensions

A Foxconn executive says poaching of employees ‘shouldn’t be condoned’

Foxconn has been making electronics in Vietnam for years, even before the US trade war with China began under the Trump administration

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Workers in Vietnam’s Bac Giang province commute to work. File photo: Bloomberg

Published: 1:53pm, 11 Jun 2022Updated: 3:45pm, 28 Jun 2022

Foxconn Technology Group is facing a battle of talent in Vietnam as major suppliers to Apple Inc continue to shift some capacity from China to the Southeast Asia country on prolonged tensions between Beijing and Washington.

The chairman of Taiwan-based Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, said the company's Chinese rivals in Vietnam had set up operations near its campuses to poach its employees.

“The move shouldn’t be condoned,” Young Liu told reporters in Taipei on Saturday, without naming any companies.

Young Liu, chairman of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, has criticised the poaching of his company’s employees. File photo: Bloomberg

Three of Foxconn’s China-based competitors are now in Vietnam: Luxshare Precision Industry and GoerTek make AirPods there, while BYD is preparing to produce iPads.

Foxconn, the prime contract manufacturing partner of Apple, now employs about 60,000 people in Vietnam, the company’s largest manufacturing base outside of China, Liu said.

He added that Foxconn would “significantly” increase the numbers of employees in Vietnam over the next one to two years, without providing a specific number.

During the Trump administration, the US implemented various measures including tariffs on certain products imported from China in an attempt to reshape global supply chains. The Biden administration is looking to reconfigure the China tariffs, but US officials have not made major changes so far.