The Bangladesh government started discussions right after the US declared reciprocal tariff on Bangladeshi products on 2 April. Our chief adviser wrote to the US president where we urged for some concessions. The commerce adviser also spoke to them.

The government even offered duty concessions on certain products that might benefit the US in the annual budget for the 2025-26 fiscal. Apart from that, we continued talks on the non-tariff barriers mentioned by the USA, including complications in investment and implementation of the intellectual property law.

Following all the talks and discussions over the last three months, the imposed reciprocal tariff has come down from 35 per cent from 37 per cent. In other words, we could not yield that much from those discussions and talks.

As part of the tariff discussions, the United States had sent a draft of a framework agreement, but we have no idea what it contained. We do not clearly know what the US demanded and what it offered in return, nor do we know what Bangladesh asked for and what it offered in exchange—none of these four aspects are clear to us.