On 14 October 2025, Thanh Tung Nguyen successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled 'Merchandise trade openness, export competitiveness, bilateral trade agreements and public-private partnerships for infrastructure development: Revisiting sovereign debt sustainability in low- and middle-income countries'.
Dr Thanh Tung Nguyen argued that estimations of the financial requirements to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were based on pre-pandemic scenarios and therefore underestimated the true costs of achieving them today.
He demonstrated that rising global economic and geopolitical pressures, lingering pandemic effects and recent capital outflows have placed significant constraints on government spending, exports and domestic investment in low- and middle-income countries.
He emphasized the need to revisit analyses of the links between trade openness, industrial employment, bilateral trade agreements and infrastructure development to better understand how these dynamics shape the sustainability of public external debt and the broader financing of sustainable development.