The fresh trade deal with Washington is, on paper, good news. Pakistan’s textile and farm exporters were bracing for a crippling tariff spike, with some duties set to jump as high as 29% this month. Now, after frantic backchannel talks, Islamabad has secured a pause.
Yet one reprieve does not equal a rescue. Scratch the surface, and it’s the same tired crisis-management playbook. We cling to the same narrow export baskets–cotton, rice, basic textiles– while everything else slips through the cracks.
The real rot shows up in the numbers. State Bank data puts total public debt at over Rs 76 trillion, increasing by 12% in just one year. Domestic borrowing jumped nearly 16%. This is a country now paying over Rs7 trillion just in interest this fiscal year, and that’s before the next IMF tranche hits, with fresh conditions that will squeeze ordinary people further.
Policymakers never lose sleep over who picks up the tab. It is not the untaxed elite or the well-connected cartels who benefit from loopholes and look the other way. It is the same shrinking pool of salaried workers and small businesses forced to pay more every year. Nearly 70% of tax revenue comes from indirect taxes, which hit those who already pay, while the big players shelter behind exemptions and political favours.
Meanwhile, we keep cutting off the very opportunities that could ease the pressure. Official trade with India, the region’s most obvious supplier of raw materials and inputs, has stayed frozen since 2019.
Yet by some estimates, $5-10 billion of Indian goods still slip through the UAE or informal channels, each extra rupee paid by an overstretched Pakistani consumer. The politics are complicated, but the contradiction is glaring: we want to fix our balance of payments, yet act like the neighbour next door does not exist.
The tariff reprieve is no victory lap. If anything, it reminds us how cheap fixes abroad will never fix an economy that keeps selling the same low-value goods to the same buyers.
Real survival means investing in what we export, finally cracking open regional trade, modernising customs, and stabilising energy so factories run through heatwaves and floods alike. Each “break” we get is just borrowed time, paid for by generations who did nothing to create this mess.
If we keep ducking the tough decisions now, we will still be chasing tariff waivers a decade from today, with fewer jobs, bigger loans, and an economy forever one crisis away from the next bailout.
