Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest ready-made garment exporter after China, on Monday provided to buy varied US farm merchandise, together with cotton, duty-free in an effort to keep away from reciprocal US tariffs, a letter from Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser, Muhammad Yunus, to US President Donald Trump confirmed.
Yunus sought a three-month postponement of the reciprocal tariff measure on Bangladeshi exports to the US, proposing a collection of initiatives, together with facilitating the launch of Billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink in Bangladesh and opening the nation’s superior tech sectors—akin to civil aviation and defence—to US firms. A number of textile manufacturing hubs akin to Vietnam, Cambodia have additionally sought such offers with the US.
The transfer comes amid issues that reciprocal tariffs have disproportionately affected smaller, extra weak economies as a result of nature of US tariff calculations. Bangladesh has been hit with a 37 per cent reciprocal tariff, a giant blow to its textile sector — the nation’s largest overseas trade earner.
India, which exports over $2 billion value of cotton and yarn to Bangladesh yearly, has a stake within the Bangladesh textile trade as a number of Indian textile companies function factories in Bangladesh to profit from the beneficial obligation regime granted to nations bracketed as Least Developed International locations (LDCs) by the European Union.
“I write to guarantee you that we in Bangladesh will take all essential actions to completely assist your commerce agenda. Shortly after your inauguration, I despatched my Excessive Consultant to Washington DC to point our intent to considerably enhance American exports to the fast-growing Bangladesh market of 170 million folks,” Yunus acknowledged within the letter.
Bangladesh is at the moment recovering from a political and financial disaster within the nation final 12 months. Excessive inflation had eroded Dhaka’s US greenback reserves, limiting the nation’s capacity to import important items akin to agricultural gadgets, iron and metal, electrical energy, and plastics from India. Over the past monetary 12 months, financial exercise has been slowing in Bangladesh as its imports of petroleum merchandise from India slipped 8 per cent in June in comparison with Might final 12 months.
“To extend the pace to market of US cotton, we’re finalising a devoted bonded warehousing facility in Bangladesh the place these items will get pleasure from duty-free entry. Additionally, you will be happy to know that Bangladesh has the bottom tariff on most US exports in South Asia. We stay dedicated to zero tariffs on key American agricultural commodities, in addition to on scrap metals,” he added. Yunus additionally stated that Bangladesh is engaged on a 50 per cent tariff discount on main US export gadgets akin to fuel generators, semiconductors, and medical tools.
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“We’re additionally eradicating an array of non-tariff boundaries to US exports. This contains eliminating sure testing necessities, rationalising packaging, labelling, and certification processes, and introducing commerce facilitation measures akin to simplified customs procedures and requirements,” he stated.
He additional famous that the nation has taken the mandatory steps to allow Starlink’s launch in Bangladesh, marking a brand new chapter for US companies throughout superior sectors like civil aviation and defence.
“We’ll full the continued and deliberate actions inside the subsequent quarter. Please enable us the mandatory time to implement this necessary work easily, in session with US officers,” Yunus concluded.
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