By Faseeh Mangi 

Pakistan will offer to buy more cotton and soybean from the US, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as it looks to halve its bilateral trade surplus and escape tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

The South Asian country wants to reduce this surplus to below $2 billion from about $4 billion in the financial year ended June, the people said, asking not to be identified as the discussions are private. Pakistan is already the second-largest buyer of US cotton by value after China and mainly sells garments and textiles to America, which is its largest export market.

Deliberations are ongoing and any offer presented during formal negotiations with the US could change, the people said. They added that purchases of Texas crude oil had also been considered as an option but there isn’t a consensus in the government due to high freight costs.

The office of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif didn’t immediately respond to a request for a comment.

A strategy report was presented to Sharif on April 9, the PMO had previously said in a statement.

“We will try to bring high tariff lines down through negotiations because US is a big market for Pakistan,” Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan told Bloomberg last week. “We are optimistic.”