Trump announces 19 percent tariff on Indonesia
US President Donald Trump announced the new deal on Tuesday.
The agreement imposes a 19 percent tariff on Indonesian goods entering the US, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Under the deal, which was finalised after Trump spoke with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, goods that have been transshipped to avoid higher duties will face steeper levies.
'As part of the Agreement, Indonesia has committed to purchasing $15 Billion Dollars in US Energy, $4.5 Billion Dollars in American Agricultural Products, and 50 Boeing Jets, many of them 777's,' Trump wrote.
In a separate post earlier on Tuesday, Trump touted the finalised pact as a 'great deal, for everybody'.
Boeing stock remained relatively flat on the announcement.
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. The period over which its various purchases will take place was also not specified.
Lagging on trade agreements
The Trump administration has been under pressure to wrap up trade pacts after promising a flurry of deals recently, as countries sought talks with Washington, DC to avoid Trump's tariff plans.
When Trump first postponed tariffs on April 2, the White House said it would have 90 deals in 90 days. But the US president has so far only unveiled other deals with Britain and Vietnam, alongside an agreement to temporarily lower tit-for-tat levies with China.
He separately told reporters that other deals are in the works including with India, while talks with the European Union are continuing.
Indonesia's former Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Dino Patti Djalal told a Foreign Policy magazine event on Tuesday that government insiders had indicated they were happy with the new deal.
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 EU and Indonesia.
Last week, 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.
So far, he 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.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump gives Russia 10 or 12 days to end war on Ukraine
United States President Donald Trump has set a new deadline of 10 or 12 days for Russia to end its war in Ukraine, underscoring his frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin for prolonging the conflict. Speaking in Scotland, where he is holding meetings with European leaders and playing golf, Trump on Monday said he was disappointed in Putin and shortened a 50-day deadline he had set this month. 'I'm going to make a new deadline of about … 10 or 12 days from today,' Trump told reporters during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 'There's no reason in waiting. … We just don't see any progress being made.' There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin. The US president has repeatedly voiced exasperation with Putin for continuing attacks on Ukraine despite US efforts to end the war and has threatened both sanctions on Russia and buyers of its exports unless progress is made. Before returning for a second term in the White House in January, Trump, who views himself as a peacemaker, had promised to end the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict within 24 hours. 'There's no reason to wait. If you know what the answer is going to be, why wait? And it would be sanctions and maybe tariffs, secondary tariffs,' Trump said. 'I don't want to do that to Russia. I love the Russian people.' But the US president, who has also expressed annoyance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not always followed up on his tough talk about Putin with action, citing what he deems a good relationship that the two men have had previously. 'We thought we had that settled numerous times, and then President Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever,' Trump said. 'And I say that's not the way to do it.'
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
‘Wipe it out faster': Trump again threatens Iran over nuclear enrichment
United States President Donald Trump has re-upped threats against Iran, just weeks after launching military strikes on three of the country's nuclear facilities. The statement on Monday was in response to Tehran's position that it will continue to pursue nuclear enrichment for civilian purposes, a red line for the Trump administration in earlier talks this year that fell apart when Israel launched a military offensive against Tehran in June. Speaking during a news conference in Scotland beside UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said that Iran was 'sending very bad signals, very nasty signals'. 'And they shouldn't be doing that,' he said. 'We wiped out their nuclear possibilities. They can start again. If they do, we'll wipe it out faster than you can wave your finger at it.' 'We will do that gladly, openly and gladly,' he said. The statement comes after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi most recently asserted Iran's right to enrich uranium ahead of talks with the UK, France and Germany last week. Iranian officials described the talks, the first serious flurry of diplomacy since the US attacks and subsequent end to the escalation with Israel, as 'serious, frank and detailed', but no breakthroughs were announced. Speaking to Al Jazeera last week, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also said that Iran would not abandon its nuclear programme, but remained open to negotiations. He added he was 'not very optimistic' about the ceasefire that ended the 12-day war with Iran holding. Israeli leaders have also signalled a willingness to restart attacks on Iran, including attacks aimed at toppling the Islamic Republic's leadership. On Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said he wanted to send a message to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. 'If you continue to threaten Israel, our long arm will reach Tehran again with even greater power – and this time personally to you too,' he said, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. Analysts have said the US approval would be all but required for any Israeli resumption of attacks on Iran. Trump had initially hailed the June 22 US attacks on Iran's Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan as having 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear programme. However, more recent intelligence reports have indicated the damage may have been less severe, setting the programme back by a shorter timeline. Over the weekend, Trump called Iran's persistence in pursuing its nuclear programme 'stupid'.
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
EU and US announce trade deal: What you need to know
The United States and the European Union have reached a wide-ranging trade agreement, ending a months-long standoff and averting a full-blown trade war just days before President Donald Trump's deadline to impose steep tariffs. The EU will pay 15 percent tariffs on most goods, including cars. The tariff rate is half the 30 percent Trump had threatened to implement starting on Friday. Brussels also agreed on Sunday to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on US weaponry and energy products on top of existing expenditures. Speaking to reporters at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, Trump hailed the agreement as the 'biggest deal ever made'. 'I think it's going to be great for both parties. It's going to bring us closer together,' he added. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the agreement would 'bring stability' and 'bring predictability that's very important for our businesses on both sides of the Atlantic'. Von der Leyen defended the deal, saying the aim was to rebalance a trade surplus with the US. Trump has made no secret of using tariffs to try to trim US trade deficits. Sunday's agreement capped off months of often tense shuttle diplomacy between Brussels and Washington although neither side disclosed the full details of the pact or released any written materials. It follows preliminary trade pacts the US signed with Japan, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines and a 90-day trade truce with China. So how will the deal impact the two sides, which account for almost a third of global trade, and will it end the threats of a tariff war? What was agreed? At a news event at Trump's golf resort, von der Leyen said a 15 percent tariff would apply to European cars, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors – all important products for Europe's economy. For his part, Trump said US levies on steel and aluminium, which he has set at 50 percent on many countries, would not be cut for EU products, dashing the hopes of industry in the bloc. Elsewhere, aerospace tariffs will remain at zero for now. In exchange for the 15 percent tariff rate on EU goods, Trump said the bloc would be 'opening up their countries at zero tariff' for American exports. In addition, he said the EU would spend an extra $750bn on US energy products, invest $600bn in the US and buy military equipment worth 'hundreds of billions of dollars'. Von der Leyen confirmed that the EU would seek to buy an extra $250bn of US energy products each year from now until 2027. 'With this deal, we are securing access to our largest export market,' she said. At the same time, she acknowledged that the 15 percent tariffs would be 'a challenge for some' European industries. The EU is the US's largest trading partner with two-way trade in goods and services last year reaching nearly $2 trillion. How have European leaders responded? German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the agreement, saying it avoids 'an unnecessary escalation in transatlantic trade relations'. He said a trade war 'would have hit Germany's export-oriented economy hard', pointing out that the German car industry would see US tariffs lowered from 27.5 percent to 15 percent. But French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou called the deal a 'dark day' for Europe, saying the bloc had caved in to the US president with an unbalanced deal that spares US imports from any immediate European retaliation. 'It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission,' Bayrou wrote on X of what he called the 'von der Leyen-Trump deal'. Wolfgang Niedermark, a board member of the Federation of German Industries trade body, called the deal 'an inadequate compromise' with the EU 'accepting painful tariffs'. A 15 percent tariff rate 'will have a huge negative impact on Germany's export-oriented industry', he said. Earlier, Benjamin Haddad, France's European affairs minister, said: 'The trade agreement … will bring temporary stability to economic actors threatened by the escalation of American tariffs, but it is unbalanced.' Echoing that sentiment, Dutch Foreign Trade Minister Hanneke Boerma said the deal was 'not ideal' and called on the commission to continue negotiations with Washington. The European Commission is responsible for negotiating trade deals for the entire bloc. EU ambassadors will be discussing the agreement with the commission this week. How was trade conducted before the deal? On July 12, Trump threatened to impose 30 percent tariffs on EU goods if the two sides couldn't reach a deal before this Friday, the day a suspension expires on the implementation of what Trump calls his 'reciprocal tariffs', which he placed on nearly all countries in the world. Those 'reciprocal tariffs' are due to come into effect in addition to the 25 percent tariffs on cars and car parts and the 50 percent levy on steel and aluminium products Trump already put in place. On the European side, it is understood that Brussels would have pushed ahead with a retaliatory tariffs package on 90 billion euros ($109bn) of US goods, including car parts and bourbon, if talks had broken down. The EU had been a frequent target of escalating trade rhetoric by Trump, who accused the bloc of 'ripping off' the US. In 2024, the US ran a $235.6bn goods deficit with the EU. Pharmaceuticals, car parts and industrial chemicals were among Europe's largest exports to the US, according to EU data. How will the deal impact the US and EU? Bloomberg Economics estimated that a no-deal outcome would have raised the effective US tariff rate on European goods to nearly 18 percent on Friday. The new deal brings that number down to 16 percent, offering a small reprieve to European exporting firms. Still, current trade barriers are much higher than before Trump took office in 2025. According to Bruegel, a research group, the average US tariff rate on EU exports was just 1.5 percent at the end of 2024. William Lee, chief economist at the Milken Institute, told Al Jazeera: 'I think the [Trump] strategy has been clear from the very beginning. … It's brinkmanship. … Either partner with the US or face high tariffs.' Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said: 'President Trump just unlocked one of the biggest economies in the world. The European Union is going to open its $20 trillion market and completely accept our auto and industrial standards for the first time ever.'
