
Trump says Indonesia to face 19% tariff under trade deal
He later told reporters that Indonesia was "giving us access" and that goods from the Southeast Asian country would face a 19 percent tariff.
Trump did not elaborate on the improved access that he had touted, although he stressed that Indonesia is "very strong on copper" and other materials.
The Trump administration has been under pressure to finalize trade pacts after promising a flurry of deals, as countries sought negotiations with Washington to avoid Trump's tariff threats.
But the US president has so far only unveiled deals with Britain and Vietnam, alongside an agreement to temporarily lower tit-for-tat levies with China.
Last week, Trump renewed his threat of a 32 percent levy on Indonesian goods, saying in a letter to the country's leadership that this level would take effect August 1.
It remains unclear when the lower tariff level announced Tuesday will take effect for Indonesia.
"We have a couple of those deals that are going to be announced. India basically is working along that same line," Trump told reporters Tuesday, referring to market access.
Indonesia's former vice minister for foreign affairs Dino Patti Djalal told a Foreign Policy event Tuesday that government insiders had indicated they were happy with the new deal.
Tariffs drive
Trump in April imposed a 10 percent tariff on almost all trading partners, while announcing plans to eventually hike this level for dozens of economies, including the European Union and Indonesia.
But days before the steeper duties were due to take effect, he pushed the deadline back from July 9 to August 1. This marked his second postponement of the elevated levies.
Instead, since early last week, Trump has been sending letters to partners, setting out the tariff levels they would face come August.
To date, Trump has sent more than 20 such letters including to the EU, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.
Canada and Mexico, both countries that were not originally targeted in Trump's "reciprocal" tariff push in April, also received similar documents outlining updated tariffs for their products.
But existing exemptions covering goods entering the United States under a North American trade pact are expected to remain in place, a US official earlier said.
Trump has unveiled blanket tariffs on trading partners in part to address what his administration deems as unfair practices that hurt American businesses.
Analysts have warned that without trade agreements, Americans could conclude that Trump's strategy to reshape US trading ties with the world has not worked.
"In the public's mind, the tariffs are the pain, and the agreements will be the gain. If there are no agreements, people will conclude his strategy was flawed," William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, previously told AFP.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


France 24
42 minutes ago
- France 24
Hanoi scooter riders baulk at petrol-powered bikes ban
"Of course everyone wants a better environment," said housewife Dang Thuy Hanh, baulking at the 80 million dong ($3,000) her family would spend replacing their four scooters with electric alternatives. "But why give us the first burden without any proper preparation?" grumbled the 52-year-old. Hanoi's scooter traffic is a fixture of the city's urban buzz. The northern hub of nine million people has nearly seven million two-wheelers, hurtling around at rush hour in a morass of congestion. Their exhausts splutter emissions regularly spurring the city to the top of worldwide smog rankings in a country where pollution claims at least 70,000 lives a year, according to the World Health Organization. The government last weekend announced plans to block fossil-fuelled bikes from Hanoi's 31 square kilometre (12 square mile) centre by next July. It will expand in stages to forbid all gas-fuelled vehicles in urban areas of the city in the next five years. Hanh -- one of the 600,000 people living in the central embargo zone -- said the looming cost of e-bikes has left her fretting over the loss of "a huge amount of savings". While she conceded e-bikes may help relieve pollution, she bemoaned the lack of public charging points near her home down a tiny alley in the heart of the city. "Why force residents to change while the city's infrastructure is not yet able to adapt to the new situation?" she asked. Many families in communist-run Vietnam own at least two motorcycles for daily commutes, school runs, work and leisure. Proposals to reform transport for environmental reasons often sparks allegations the burden of change is felt highest by the working class. London has since 2023 charged a toll for older, higher pollution-emitting vehicles. France's populist "Yellow Vest" protests starting in 2018 were in part sparked by allegations President Emmanuel Macron's "green tax" on fuel was unfair for the masses. 'Cost too high' Hanoi authorities say they are considering alleviating the financial burden by offering subsidies of at least three million dong ($114) per switch to an e-bike, and also increasing public bus services. Food delivery driver Tran Van Tan, who rides his bike 40 kilometres (25 miles) every day from neighbouring Hung Yen province to downtown Hanoi, says he makes his living "on the road". "The cost of changing to an e-bike is simply too high," said the 45-year-old, employed through the delivery app Grab. "Those with a low income like us just cannot suddenly replace our bikes." Compared with a traditional two-wheeler, he also fears the battery life of e-bikes "won't meet the needs for long-distance travel". But citing air pollution as a major threat to human health, the environment and quality of life, deputy mayor Duong Duc Tuan earlier this week said "drastic measures are needed". In a recent report, Hanoi's environment and agriculture ministry said over half of the poisonous smog that blankets the city for much of the year comes from petrol and diesel vehicles. The World Bank puts the figure at 30 percent, with factories and waste incineration also major culprits. Several European cities, such as Barcelona, Paris and Amsterdam have also limited the use of internal combustion engines on their streets -- and other major Vietnamese cities are looking to follow suit. The southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City aims to gradually transition delivery and service motorbikes to electric over the next few years. But with the high costs, office worker Nguyen My Hoa thinks the capital's ban will not be enforceable. "Authorities will not be able to stop the huge amount of gasoline bikes from entering the inner districts," 42-year-old Hoa said. "It simply does not work." © 2025 AFP


France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
Japan sees bright future for ultra-thin, flexible solar panels
Pliable perovskite panels are perfect for mountainous Japan, with its shortage of flat plots for traditional solar farms. And a key component of the panels is iodine, something Japan produces more of than any country but Chile. The push faces some obstacles: perovskite panels contain toxic lead, and, for now, produce less power and have shorter lifespans than their silicon counterparts. Still, with a goal of net-zero by 2050 and a desire to break China's solar supremacy, perovskite cells are "our best card to achieve both decarbonisation and industrial competitiveness," minister of industry Yoji Muto said in November. "We need to succeed in their implementation in society at all costs," he said. The government is offering generous incentives to get industry on board, including a 157-billion-yen ($1 billion) subsidy to plastic maker Sekisui Chemical for a factory to produce enough perovskite solar panels to generate 100 megawatts by 2027, enough to power 30,000 households. By 2040, Japan wants to install enough perovskite panels to generate 20 gigawatts of electricity, equivalent to adding about 20 nuclear reactors. That should help Japan's target to have renewable energy cover up to 50 percent of electricity demand by 2040. Breaking the silicon ceiling The nation is looking to solar power, including perovskite and silicon-based solar cells, to cover up to 29 percent of all electricity demand by that time, a sharp rise from 9.8 percent in 2023. "To increase the amount of renewable energy and achieve carbon neutrality, I think we will have to mobilise all the technologies available," said Hiroshi Segawa, a specialist in next-generation solar technology at the University of Tokyo. "Perovskite solar panels can be built domestically, from the raw materials to production to installation. In that sense, they could significantly contribute to things like energy security and economic security," he told AFP. Tokyo wants to avoid a repeat of the past boom and bust of the Japanese solar business. In the early 2000s, Japanese-made silicon solar panels accounted for almost half the global market. Now, China controls more than 80 percent of the global solar supply chain, from the production of key raw material to assembling modules. Silicon solar panels are made of thin wafers that are processed into cells that generate electricity. They must be protected by reinforced glass sheets and metal frames, making the final products heavy and cumbersome. Perovskite solar cells, however, are created by printing or painting ingredients such as iodine and lead onto surfaces like film or sheet glass. The final product can be just a millimetre thick and a tenth the weight of a conventional silicon solar cell. Perovskite panels' malleability means they can be installed on uneven and curved surfaces, a key feature in Japan, where 70 percent of the country is mountainous. Generating where power is used The panels are already being incorporated into several projects, including a 46-storey Tokyo building to be completed by 2028. The southwestern city of Fukuoka has also said it wants to cover a domed baseball stadium with perovskite panels. And major electronics brand Panasonic is working on integrating perovskite into windowpanes. "What if all of these windows had solar cells integrated in them?" said Yukihiro Kaneko, general manager of Panasonic's perovskite PV development department, gesturing to the glass-covered high-rise buildings surrounding the firm's Tokyo office. That would allow power to be generated where it is used, and reduce the burden on the national grid, Kaneko added. For all the enthusiasm, perovskite panels remain far from mass production. They are less efficient than their silicon counterparts, and have a lifespan of just a decade, compared to 30 years for conventional units. The toxic lead they contain also means they need careful disposal after use. However, the technology is advancing fast. Some prototypes can perform nearly as powerfully as silicon panels and their durability is expected to reach 20 years soon. University professor Segawa believes Japan could have a capacity of 40 gigawatts from perovskite by 2040, while the technology could also speed up renewable uptake elsewhere. "We should not think of it as either silicon or perovskite. We should look at how we can maximise our ability to utilise renewable energy," Segawa said.


France 24
7 hours ago
- France 24
Japan PM faces reckoning in upper house election
With many Japanese hurt by rising prices, especially for rice, opinion polls suggest that Ishiba's governing coalition could lose its majority in the upper house. This could be the final nail for Ishiba, having already been humiliatingly forced into a minority government after lower house elections in October. "Ishiba may need to step down," Toru Yoshida, a politics professor at Doshisha University, told AFP. Japan could "step into an unknown dimension of the ruling government being a minority in both the lower house and the upper house, which Japan has never experienced since World War II," Yoshida said. Ishiba's centre-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955, albeit with frequent changes of leader. Ishiba, 68, a self-avowed defence "geek" and train enthusiast, reached the top of the greasy pole last September on his fifth attempt and immediately called elections. But this backfired and the vote left the LDP and its small coalition partner Komeito needing support from opposition parties, stymying its legislative agenda. "Energy prices have swung sharply in recent months, as the government has flip-flopped between removing aid for household energy bills and adding new supports," said Stefan Angrick at Moody's Analytics. Trumped Out of 248 seats in the upper house, 125 are up for grabs on Sunday. The coalition needs 50 of these to keep a majority. Not helping is lingering resentment about an LDP funding scandal, and US tariffs of 25 percent due to bite from August 1 if there is no trade deal with the United States. Japan's massive auto industry, which accounts for eight percent of the country's jobs, is reeling from painful levies already in place. Weak export data last week stoked fears that the world's fourth-largest economy could tip into a technical recession. Despite Ishiba securing an early meeting with US President Donald Trump in February, and sending his trade envoy to Washington seven times, there has been no accord. Trump last week poured cold water on the prospects of an agreement, saying Japan won't "open up their country". "We will not easily compromise," Ishiba said earlier this month. Ishiba's apparently maximalist strategy of insisting all tariffs are cut to zero -- although this could change post-election -- has also drawn criticism. "How well his government is able to handle negotiations over US tariffs is extremely important, as it's important for the LDP to increase trust among the public," Masahisa Endo, politics professor at Waseda University, told AFP. 'Japanese first' The last time the LDP and Komeito failed to win a majority in the upper house was in 2010, having already fallen below the threshold in 2007. That was followed by a rare change of government in 2009, when the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan governed for a rocky three years. Today the opposition is fragmented, and chances are slim that the parties can form an alternative government. One making inroads is the "Japanese-first" Sanseito, which opinion poll suggest could win more than 10 upper house seats, up from two now. The party wants "stricter rules and limits" on immigration, opposes "globalism" and "radical" gender policies, and wants a re-think on decarbonisation and vaccines. Last week it was forced to deny any links to Moscow -- which has backed populist parties elsewhere -- after a candidate was interviewed by Russian state media. "They put into words what I had been thinking about but couldn't put into words for many years," one voter told AFP at a Sanseito rally.