OPINION | America's Shopping List: Forcing Bangladesh to Buy What It Doesn't Need

by Ashu Mann

The most revealing line in the U.S.-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade appears in Article 5.4, which states that Bangladesh “shall purchase” U.S. goods as outlined in Section 6 of Annex III. When read alongside Annex III, Section 6, the agreement effectively commits Bangladesh to facilitating the purchase of 14 Boeing aircraft, approximately $15 billion in U.S. liquefied natural gas over 15 years, and roughly $3.5 billion in agricultural products, including wheat, soy, and cotton.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative describes the pact as a legally binding agreement that grants American exporters “unprecedented” access to the Bangladeshi market. This is not free trade in any meaningful sense. It reflects procurement under pressure: Washington is using tariff leverage to turn Bangladesh’s market into a guaranteed sales channel for U.S. corporations. The timing only sharpens this imbalance.

In April 2025, Bangladesh’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, urged Washington to suspend a 37 percent tariff, citing Dhaka’s efforts to increase imports from the United States. Reuters later reported that Bangladesh’s garment sector had been severely impacted by U.S. tariffs, domestic unrest, and political instability, with the country still governed by an unelected interim administration following the upheaval of 2024.

In this context, Washington was clearly negotiating from a position of overwhelming leverage. This was not simply commerce; it was coercive bargaining with a vulnerable state whose most critical export sector was already under strain. While the United States frames the deal as reciprocal, when one side faces tariff pressure and political fragility, “market access” begins to resemble economic coercion.

The cotton-linked garment concession is particularly striking. The White House indicated that the zero-tariff mechanism for certain Bangladeshi textile and apparel exports would be tied to the volume of U.S.-produced cotton and man-made fiber inputs imported from the United States. Reuters similarly noted that the size of the zero-duty quota would depend on how much U.S.-made textile input Bangladesh purchases.

In effect, duty-free access is being used as leverage to redirect Bangladesh’s sourcing decisions toward American suppliers. This undermines the fundamentals of a competitive garment industry. Bangladesh currently sources cotton from a diverse set of suppliers, including Brazil, India, Africa, and the United States, with West African cotton holding the largest market share, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

For Dhaka, the rational approach is diversified, cost-effective sourcing. The U.S. approach, however, seeks to tie tariff relief to dependency. This pattern extends into food and energy. Annex III promotes long-term LNG procurement, large-scale wheat commitments, and significant soy imports. Yet Reuters reports that Bangladesh has historically relied on more affordable wheat from the Black Sea region and has turned to U.S. wheat in part to ease trade tensions with Washington.

This reveals the core issue: decisions that should be guided by price, supply security, and domestic demand are being absorbed into a broader geopolitical strategy aimed at securing American exports. Even the softer language in Annex III, which often states that Bangladesh shall “endeavor” to purchase or facilitate purchases, provides limited reassurance when Article 5.4 mandates that Bangladesh “shall purchase,” and Article 6.4 allows the United States to reimpose tariffs if Bangladesh is deemed non-compliant.

This is not a partnership of equals. It is a framework designed to constrain Bangladesh while ensuring profits for U.S. exporters. Bangladesh should recognize the agreement for what it is: a commercially driven framework shaped by pressure from Washington. It must be renegotiated to ensure that procurement decisions reflect Bangladesh’s actual needs, not externally imposed priorities.

Any trade arrangement that conditions market access on purchasing specific U.S. goods is not development policy. It is dependency by design. Dhaka should revisit the agreement, remove purchase-linked conditionalities, reject cotton-for-tariff leverage, and reaffirm a fundamental principle of sovereignty: Bangladesh must buy what serves its national interest, not what others seek to sell.

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About the Author

Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. He is pursuing a PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.