Kathmandu. Bangladesh said on Sunday it had granted a license to tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, as US tariffs raised fears for its key garment sector.
The Starlink service will be unveiled at a government-backed investment summit starting in Dhaka on Monday. “We have given them the go-ahead,” Bangladesh Investment Development Board Chairman Chaudhary Ashiq Mahmood said on Sunday.
The go-ahead was granted on March 28, Mahmood said, days before US President Donald Trump announced his sweeping tariff program. Trump’s tariff program has sent global markets reeling. The new tariffs on Bangladeshi goods were set at 37 percent. It has raised the tax on cotton from a previous 16 percent.
Musk has a highly visible role in the White House as Trump’s right-hand man, and his meetings with foreign leaders have raised questions about the blurring of the line between official roles and business interests. Interim authorities in Dhaka are seeking US diplomatic support after a student-led revolution toppled the hardline former government in August 2024.
Interim leader Muhammad Yunus held an emergency meeting on Saturday to assess the impact of the tax on the world’s second-largest garment producer. Yunus, a Nobel laureate, will write to Trump about the tariffs, his press secretary said on Sunday. Musk and Yunus spoke in February about bringing Starlink, a low-Earth orbit satellite that provides internet access to remote areas, to Bangladesh. At the time, they stressed that the service would “create new opportunities for Bangladesh’s entrepreneurial youth, rural and vulnerable women, and remote communities,” according to a statement from Yunus’ media office.
The South Asian country’s exports of textiles and garments account for about 80 percent of its exports. According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, a national trade body, Bangladesh exports $8.4 billion worth of garments to the United States annually. That’s about 20 percent of Bangladesh’s total ready-made garment exports. Two Indian companies have already signed agreements with Musk’s Starlink.
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