By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: Pakistan is seeking to increase its imports from the United States and eliminate non-tariff barriers in an effort to mitigate the impact of high tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.
“It’s a bigger canvas that we are looking at in terms of engaging the US,” Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb told Bloomberg in an interview. “We will constructively engage, and we will have a formal delegation coming in.”
Aurangzeb said Pakistan is looking to buy more cotton and soybean from the US and is in talks to remove non-tariff barriers to facilitate more US products entering its markets. “We can also look at if there are any issues with respect to non-tariff discussion, whether there are any onerous inspections at our end for US products, we can obviously view that.”
Trump ignited a potentially ruinous trade war earlier this month as he slapped sweeping tariffs on imports from around the world and harsh additional levies on key trading partners.
In his second term, Trump has doubled down on protectionist policies, reinstating a 29 percent reciprocal tariff on Pakistani textiles and other goods earlier this month, but later temporary paused it till July.
The move threatens to squeeze Pakistan’s $5.2 billion annual exports to the U.S., its largest market, as the South Asian nation grapples with dwindling foreign reserves. Pakistan’s imports from the US are about $2.1 billion. The country will send a trade delegation to Washington in the coming months to bridge the trade gap.
The minister said the country is also open to foreign direct investments from US firms in its recently opened minerals and mining sectors.
Aurangzeb, a close aide of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is in the US for a nearly week-long trip to participate in the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker said that the crisis-ridden nation will tap the international capital markets to secure more funds for a sustainable growth.
“What we are looking for is how we get away from a boom and bust cycle which Pakistan has gone through and get on to a sustainable growth path,” he said.
Pakistan is preparing to debut its first-ever Panda bond in the range of $200 million to $250 million that will likely take place in the fourth quarter of this year, the minister added.
Authorities are trying the rebuild the Pakistan’s tattered economy after it came close to a default in 2023. Last month, the South Asian nation won an initial nod for a $2.3 billion IMF loan that will give it funding visibility until 2027. Last week, Fitch upgraded Pakistan’s credit rating, citing confidence that the South Asian country will be able to sustain reforms under the IMF loan program.
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