By Ariba Shahid, Asif Shahh Zhhhz and Kanishka Singh
Islamabad/Washington (Reuters) -the cluttered states and Pakistan welcomed a commercial deal on Thursday that Islamabad said it would lead to lower rates and increase in investment, but without specifying the rate of tariff to be imposed on Pakistani exports.
“This deal marks the beginning of a new era of economic cooperation, especially in energy, mini and minerals, IT, cryptocurrency and other sectors,” a statement from the Pakistan Ministry said after the last round of negotiations in Washington.
Islamabad described the deal as a wider partnership marker with Washington, and Finance Minister Mohammed Aurangzab, who led the last round of negotiations, said there was a more economic and strategic agreement.
“From our point of view, it always goes beyond the immediate commercial imperative, and its whole goal was that trade and investment should go hand in hand,” he said in video notes.
Pakistan was facing a potential tariff of 29%, which was later suspended – as with other nations – to allow commercial conversations up to a deadline of August 1. Islamabad strives for a tariff, a smaller than regional commercial rivals such as Vietnam, which had a 20% tariff imposed by Trump, and India, which is threatened by 25% tariff.
Islamabad’s trade surplus with Washington was about $ 3 billion in 2024, mainly due to textile exports. The United States is the largest Pakistan market for textiles.
The Ministry of Finance said the agreement would lead to a “reduction in reciprocal tariffs, especially Pakistani exports to the United States,” but stopped revealing the figure.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump Tubi Pact to help develop oil reserves in Pakistan. “We have just made a deal with the Pakistan country, in which Pakistan and the United States will work together for the development of their massive oil reserves,” Trump wrote in social media.
“We are in the process of choosing the oil company that will manage this partnership.”
An offshore study
However, Pakistan has seen a series of unsuccessful attempts at offshore research. His proven restorative conventional reserves of raw oil between 234 million and 353 million barrels in various estimates put him around the 50th place in the world.
The extraction of shale oil has not been developed in Pakistan, although a 2015 survey by the American Administration for Energy Information evaluated a technically restored shale oil resource of 9.1 billion barrels for Pakistan.
Oil is the largest import of Pakistan, $ 11.3 billion a year ended on June 30, 2025, which represents almost one fifth of its total import bill, according to Central Bank data.