President Donald Trump announced late on Wednesday that he had reached an agreement with that will see Washington help develop the South Asian nation’s oil reserves.
“We have just concluded a Deal with the Country of Pakistan, whereby Pakistan and the United States will work together on developing their massive Oil Reserves,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social.
Pakistan said the deal will result in lower tariffs on its exports to the US.
The country’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, confirmed the deal in a statement.
“Pakistan concludes deal with USA,” he wrote on X, without elaborating further.
Sketchy details of US-Pakistan agreement
The details of the deal — including the tariff rate agreed upon and the oil reserves Trump was referring to— were not immediately clear.
Trump also made no mention of tariffs in his announcement.
“We are in the process of choosing the Oil Company that will lead this Partnership,” the US President said.
In April, Pakistan was facing a potential tariff of 29% from US, which was later suspended for 90 days to make way trade negotitiations.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s Finance Minister Mohammad Aurangzeb said he had conducted meetings with senior US officials in Washington, and called the deal a “win-win” situation for his country and the US.
Aurangzeb is visiting the US capital for the second time in two weeks for what he said was a final-stage parley on a tariff deal.
“From our perspective, it was always going beyond the immediate trade imperative, and its whole purpose was, and is, that trade and investment have to go hand in hand,” he said in a video posted by Pakistan’s finance ministry.
Trump’s scathing remarks on India
The development between US and Pakistan comes less than a day after Washington on Islamabad’s India.
The US imposed the tariff and other financial penalties over it, slated to take effect from August 1, for India’s trade with Russia despite the ongoing Ukraine war.
Trump on Wednesday criticized the Russian and Indian economies, adding that the latter had one of the “highest” tariffs in the world.
“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care. We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World,” he said.
While announcing the oil partnership with Pakistan, the US President also suggested that Islamabad could sell oil to New Delhi “some day”.
“Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling Oil to India some day!” Trump wrote.
Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher
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