President Donald Trump and the Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Imran Khan, speak to the media in the Oval Office at the White House on July 22, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's three-day visit to the U.S. is not likely going to do much for his country's struggling economy, a political analyst said Tuesday.

Structural problems have hamstrung growth, and Pakistan is awash in external debt, having taken on billions of dollars in loans from countries such as China and Saudi Arabia to ease pressures on its current account.

The International Monetary Fund recently approved a $6 billion loan package to shore up Pakistan's economy. But growth is set to slow to 2.4% in the current fiscal year — from 5.5% in the year that ended June 2018, IMF predicted.

"I imagine that one of the requests that Imran Khan and other senior officials traveling with them in Washington have asked for is some type of stepped-up U.S. support for Pakistan's economy," Michael Kugelman, deputy director and senior associate for South Asia at the U.S.-based Wilson Center, told CNBC's "Street Signs."

He said it's not likely that Washington will extend economic help to Pakistan yet, as there are other issues that take precedence in their bilateral dialogue — namely, Afghanistan and counter-terrorism. Instead, the U.S. is dangling the possibility of stronger trade and economic cooperation with Pakistan, if the latter were to help with the peace talks in Afghanistan and do more to crack down on terrorism within its borders, Kugelman said.

"If you look at the statement that the White House released soon before Prime Minister Khan had his meeting with Trump, there was a series of lines in the statement about how U.S. and Pakistan trade cooperation has increased in recent years, sort of like highlighting the fact that you do have this cooperation," he said.

Kugelman added that Khan could potentially also look to the U.S. private sector to try and bring in some support to the Pakistani economy through new investments.