The bilateral trade in goods between Bangladesh and the United States (US) declined slightly in the last calendar year, according to the latest statistics of the US Census Bureau. It shows, both the import from Bangladesh to the US and export from the US to Bangladesh declined in 2016. Bangladesh’s import from the US declined to $895 million in the year which was $943 million in the previous year, according to the updated US trade statistics. On the other hand, US import from Bangladesh (or Bangladesh’s export to the US) declined to US$5,912.30 million last year from $5,991.30 million in 2015. Thus, the bilateral merchandise trade dropped to $6,807.67 million last year than that of $6,933.84 million in 2015.
Mr Donald Trump, new president of the US, has initiated conservative trade policy as soon as he assumed office in January this year by pulling out his country from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. He vowed to do so during his election campaign last year. The decline in bilateral trade, however, couldn’t be attributed to Mr Trump’s move towards conservative trade policy at this stage. Due to decline in trade, US customs collected $901.84 million in duties on the total value of products imported from Bangladesh in 2016, which was $911.60 million 2015, according to the latest statistics available with the USITC data web. As a result, the average rate of import tariff on Bangladeshi products stood at 15.25 per cent last year. Bangladesh has long been urging the US administration to allow tariff-free market access. But the US has so far continuously denied it while not full-filling the obligation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. The Hong Kong Ministerial Conference of WTO, held in 2005, had formulated rules obliging the developed countries to allow 100 per cent tariff-free market access of all products from all the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). If any country is ‘not in a position to do so’, it has to provide the access for at least 97 per cent of products while the Bali Ministerial Conference asking the countries to extend the product coverage. While almost all the developed courtiers allowed tariff-free market access to the LDCs, including Bangladesh, the US counter-argued that the decisions were not obligatory until the conclusion of the Doha round of trade negotiation. But, the US has already granted unilateral tariff-free market access to African and Caribbean LDCs. Only Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal and few other Asia-Pacific LDCs are yet to get the access. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s apparel export to the United States (US) dropped marginally last year, according to the latest statistics of the Office of Textile and Apparel (OTEXA). It showed the value of apparel import from Bangladesh by the US stood at $5.30 billion in 2016 than that of $5.40 billion in 2015, showing 1.8 per cent fall. In fact, except Vietnam, all the top 10 apparel exporting countries faced downward trend in exports last year. Apparel export from Vietnam registered a modest 2.3 per cent growth last year. Export from China, the top apparel source of the US, declined by 8.38 per cent. Indonesia, the fourth largest apparel exporter to the US market, faced 4.68 per cent decline, followed by Honduras suffering 4.47 per cent fall in apparel export. Apparel export of India to the US declined marginally by 0.69 per cent while Cambodia faced 13.63 per cent decline last year.
