US officials to arrive in Dhaka Sunday for tariff talks

A United States trade delegation will arrive in Bangladesh on Sunday for meetings with commerce ministry officials on bilateral trade, progress on trade agreements and the reciprocal tariff imposed by the White House.

Brendan Lynch, assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asia, will lead the three-member team.

Dhaka hopes the discussions will pave the way for a further reduction in the revised 20 percent tariff imposed by President Donald Trump in August.

However, it is not yet clear how much the rate could be lowered, Commerce Secretary Mahbubur Rahman told The Daily Star over the phone yesterday.

Commerce Adviser Sk Bashir Uddin has said on several occasions that Bangladesh is continuing talks with the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) to push for a further cut in the tariff.

Rahman said the tariff issue would certainly be on the table during the talks, but any final decision would come from the Trump administration.

During the two-day visit, Dhaka and Washington will also review progress on the signing of the trade agreement, the commerce secretary added.

The US Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments over President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs, taking up a fast-moving appeal that deals with the centrepiece of the administration's economic agenda.

In the meantime, the tariffs will remain in place while the court hears the case.

President Trump is urging the justices to overturn a lower court ruling that found his administration acted unlawfully in imposing many of its import taxes.

Referring to this, Rahman said it was also not possible to give a timeline for when the two countries might sign the agreement on the 20 percent reciprocal tariff.

After months of negotiation with the USTR, the Trump administration set a 20 percent tariff on Bangladeshi goods, which came into effect on August 7 this year.

Bangladesh has been hoping that exports will grow under the new rate, which is lower than the tariffs faced by major competitors such as China and India.

The Trump administration has imposed a 20 percent tariff on Vietnamese products, another key rival of Bangladesh in the global garment market. In Vietnam's case, the rate could rise to 40 percent if goods are shipped to the US through re-routing or transhipment.

Ahead of the tariff decision, Bangladesh committed to importing more US goods, including aircraft, wheat and soybean products, in an effort to reduce the trade gap between the two countries.

Currently, Bangladesh exports goods worth more than $8 billion to the US each year, while importing about $2 billion, leaving a trade gap of $6 billion.

The US is the single largest export destination for Bangladesh, and more than 90 percent of its exports to the American market are garments.

Bangladesh is the third-largest garment exporter to the US, after China and Vietnam, with a 9.3 percent share of the $81 billion American apparel import.