Pakistan, May 30 -- Pakistan's cotton crisis has reached the point where the country is importing the weakness it should have corrected at home. Textile mills have begun buying American and Brazilian cotton before the local ginning season has properly opened, and one recent order of more than 206,000 bales from the United States, accounting for almost the entire weekly US export sale, is best read as a vote of no confidence in the domestic crop and in the policies meant to protect it.

Cotton sits at the base of Pakistan's largest export industry, which means its collapse cannot be treated as a routine farm-sector disappointment. Pakistan is trying to build an export-led recovery while importing the fibre that feeds its textile mills, a c...