Efforts go on to address tariff issue with United States, says press secretary
Bangladesh desk: Chief adviser’s press secretary Shafiqul Alam on Thursday said that their ongoing work with the United States government is expected to help addressing the tariff issue.
The United States has announced a 37 per cent tariff on imports from Bangladesh as part of president Donald Trump’s sweeping new Reciprocal Tariffs policy.
‘Bangladesh is reviewing its tariffs on products imported from the United States,’ said the chief adviser’s press secretary.
He said that the National Board of Revenue is identifying options to rationalise tariffs expeditiously, which is necessary to address the matter.
‘The United States is a close friend of Bangladesh and our largest export destination,’ Alam said before leaving Dhaka for Bangkok where chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus is leading the Bangladesh delegation to attend the BIMSTEC Summit.
The press secretary said that they had been working with the US since the Trump administration took over to enhance trade and investment cooperation between the two countries.
Bangladesh got slapped with a whopping 37 per cent, Trump team’s calculation being that the country imposes 74 per cent tariffs on imports from the US, that they then halved for many countries to arrive at ‘reciprocal’, because ‘we’re such nice people.’
Currently, most Bangladeshi goods are subjected to a 15 per cent tariff on entry into the US market.
The new rate is thus well over double the present rate.
The only consolation for Bangladesh might be that a number of its competitors fared worse.
Vietnam got slapped with 46 per cent, Cambodia 49 per cent, Sri Lanka 44 per cent. India and Pakistan fared slightly better though, at 26 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.
