Made in Vietnam NEW YORK - Among the sumptuous linens, sleek vases, postmodern furniture and funky novelties at last week's International Giftware Show, one booth drew attention not just for its candles and lanterns but for the little tags they bore: Made in Vietnam. Designed to hold votives or tea lights, they are part of the trickle of goods into this country from America's onetime enemy. Buyers attending the show to order products that will appear in shops in coming months have snapped them up, said Andy Van Meter, president of Design Ideas of Elgin, Ill., which imports goods from all over Asia. Although President Clinton lifted the U.S. embargo against Vietnam six years ago this month, the anticipated trade bonanza has not materialized. Goods made in that country are still relatively rare here. Of the $933 billion the United States spent worldwide on imports during the first 10 months of 1999, only $560 million in goods came from Vietnam. The latest year-to-year treaty required for normalized trade has not been signed. Each nation can buy the other's products, but without a treaty, manufactured goods are subject to high import duties. That hasn't stopped Van Meter from doing business with a factory in Ho Chi Minh City--formerly Saigon--where 120 workers make the colorful lanterns and lamps of resin-infused parchment paper and metal. Candy Humphries, a buyer-manager at Johnson's Flower and Garden Center in Tenleytown, doesn't care where the lanterns are made. "I just fell in love with them. I thought they were so neat. They have a nostalgic feel, in a kind of 21st-century way." By the end of April, all four Johnson's stores are to offer the 2-by-2-by-3-inch cubes for $5.99 each and the 2-by-4-inch cylinders for $7.29. "People really aren't interested in buying garden things until the snow melts." by Annie Groer - The Washington Post - January 22, 2000.