"Pakistan exports by country" looks like a question with a table for an answer. The table is worth having, but it buries the finding: Pakistan does not have one export concentration problem. It has two, and they multiply.
A narrow range of products is sold into a narrow set of markets. Either alone would be manageable. Together they mean that a single decision taken in Washington or Brussels reaches a large fraction of the country's foreign earnings at once.
The short answer
Merchandise exports were around $31 billion in FY2025-26. Textiles and apparel are roughly 55–60% of that. The United States takes about 20%, and China about 9%.
Add the European buyers — Germany, Spain and the Netherlands at about 5% each, Italy about 4% — and the transatlantic pair of the US and the EU accounts for the large majority of what Pakistan sells.
Where the exports actually go
| Destination | Share of FY26 exports |
|---|---|
| United States | ≈ 20% |
| China | ≈ 9% |
| Germany | ≈ 5% |
| Spain | ≈ 5% |
| Netherlands | ≈ 5% |
| Italy | ≈ 4% |
| Bangladesh | ≈ 2% |
| Saudi Arabia | ≈ 2% |
| All other destinations | ≈ 33% |
The United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan also sit in the top ten without individually large shares.
Two observations before the mechanism.
The "all other" line is not diversification. A third of exports spread across the entire rest of the world, in shares too small to list, is not a portfolio — it is a long tail of small orders. Diversification means several markets each large enough to absorb a shock in another. Pakistan does not have that.
The EU is a block, not a set of countries. Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy are separate lines in the table but a single regulatory jurisdiction. They share one tariff schedule and one preference regime. Reading them as four independent markets overstates diversification considerably — a point examined below.
The mechanism: two concentrations, multiplied
Trade risk is usually discussed as though product concentration and market concentration were separate problems. For Pakistan they compound, and the compounding is the point.
Product concentration means that when demand for one category softens — home textiles, say, in a European housing downturn — a large share of total export earnings moves at once. There is no second industry of comparable size to offset it.
Market concentration means that when one buyer's policy changes, the same thing happens for an entirely different reason.
Because the same narrow product set is sold into the same narrow market set, a shock in either dimension hits nearly the whole export base. A country selling twenty products to forty markets can absorb the loss of one product or one market. A country selling essentially one product family to essentially two markets cannot.
This is why the two policy files examined elsewhere on this site matter far more to Pakistan than their subject matter suggests.
The European exposure: GSP+
More than 85% of Pakistan's exports to the EU enter duty and quota free under GSP+, and around 89% of textile and clothing articles arrive at a preferential rate. The scheme's convention list rises from 27 to 32 from January 2027, with the assessment shifting toward demonstrated implementation.
Because the EU block is a comparable size to the US share, a change in that single regime reaches something on the order of a quarter of Pakistan's export earnings — through one decision, in one jurisdiction. See GSP+ explained.
The American exposure: tariff policy
The US is the single largest destination at about a fifth of exports. In March 2026 USTR opened Section 301 investigations into sixteen economies, several of them Pakistan's direct competitors in garments — and Pakistan was not among them. See Section 301 tariffs explained.
That absence is potentially favourable. It is also a reminder of the underlying fragility: a fifth of export earnings sits downstream of decisions made under a domestic American statute in which Pakistan has no vote, only the right to file a comment.
The misconception: "diversify exports" is a description, not a strategy
Every Pakistani export policy document for three decades has called for diversification. Exports remain roughly 55–60% textiles. The gap between the recommendation and the outcome is not a failure of will, and treating it as one has produced a great deal of unhelpful commentary.
Diversification is an outcome of firm-level capability, not an input a ministry can select. A country exports what its firms can make to a standard a foreign buyer will accept, at a price that survives the freight. Changing that requires new capability — machinery, process control, certification, design, working capital, and buyers willing to place a first order with an unproven supplier.
Two consequences follow, both uncomfortable.
The preference schemes reinforce the concentration they were meant to relieve. GSP+ lowers the tariff on what Pakistan already exports. That makes existing lines more profitable, which is exactly the right incentive for producing more of the same and exactly the wrong one for entering something new. Research on Pakistan's garment exports after 2014 found gains concentrated in existing products and existing firms rather than in the diversification the scheme intended.
Utilisation is already high, so the constraint is not access. More than 88% of eligible exports actually used the EU preference. When exporters are already claiming nearly all the preference available to them, the binding constraint is not paperwork or market access. It is what the country can make.
The honest framing: Pakistan's export problem is a production problem wearing a trade-policy costume. Trade policy can lower the cost of selling what already exists. It cannot conjure a second industry.
What to watch
- Monthly PBS trade data by category and destination. The monthly series shows composition shifts long before the annual totals do.
- The export-to-remittance ratio. Remittances exceed merchandise exports. Any assessment of Pakistan's external position that looks only at trade is looking at the smaller flow.
- US import statistics by origin, if Section 301 duties land on competitors. The question is empirical: do orders actually shift, and can Pakistan fill them?
- Unit values, not just volumes. Rising volume at falling unit value is a margin problem disguised as export growth — the characteristic pattern of a low-margin, low-differentiation export base.
- Any category that reaches 2–3% from nothing. That, rather than a policy announcement, is what real diversification looks like when it starts.
For the wider data picture, see the Pakistan economic data tracker. For how export earnings interact with the currency, see how remittances affect the exchange rate.