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Foreign adviser Md Touhid Hossain on Thursday said that he would say nothing about the ‘non-disclosure agreement’ with the United States as the negotiations were in progress over the proposed US reciprocal tariff.

‘We don’t like to say anything about the deal halfway as a negotiation is going on with the US over the tariff issue,’ he told reporters at the ministry when asked about the reason for signing the non-disclosure agreement with the US.

The foreign adviser said that the commerce ministry could answer to the question regarding the non-disclosure deal as they were leading the talks with the US from the Bangladesh side.

He asked all concerned to wait until the US tariff negotiations were over.   

Commerce adviser Sk Bashir Uddin, on several occasions, said that they could not disclose the outcome of the negotiation talks with the US or the content of the proposed deal on tariffs since they had a non-disclosure agreement with the US.

Talking to reporters at the secretariat, commerce adviser Sk Bashir Uddin earlier on the day said that the government would not sign any deal against the interest of the country. 

Asked to comment whether the US had been given extra benefits for the proposed tariff deal, he said that this was an irreverent question.

He said that they were not doing anything against the country’s interest while referring to the inter-ministerial exercises begun since April when the US president Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs with its trading nations.

Bangladesh has already completed two rounds of negotiations with the US and expects to hold the third round of talks on the proposed 35 per cent tariff on goods exported from Dhaka to the US market.

Earlier, the commerce adviser said that they had already sent their position paper and now waited for the date for the third round of negotiations.

The commerce ministry officials said that the third-round negation would be held on July 29.  

Commerce secretary Mahbubur Rahman told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· earlier that they had submitted their position paper to the United States Trade Representative.   

Regarding the queries on the clauses of the position papers, he said that, as it was a non-disclosure agreement, they could not disclose anything at this time.