Trump says Indonesia 'reciprocal' tariff to be cut to 19% in trade deal
KEN MORIYASU
WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he had agreed to a trade deal with his Indonesian counterpart, Prabowo Subianto, that would see the "reciprocal" tariff rate on Southeast Asia's largest economy drop from the previously threatened 32% to 19%.
In return, Indonesia committed to buying $15 billion worth of U.S. energy, $4.5 billion of American agricultural products and 50 Boeing jets, "many of them 777's," Trump announced on social media. He also claimed that American exports to Indonesia will be free of both tariffs and nontariff barriers.
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Others are concerned it would take years to get the funds released once seized, because of the legal challenges that Russia would certainly mount in international courts — and might even win. To date, there have been attempts to satisfy everybody. First it was using only the interest on the Russian assets to support Ukraine, producing an initial biannual payment of €1.5 billion ($1.75 billion) in July last year — a rounding error on Ukraine's needs. Then, in October, the Groupd of Seven countries agreed to leverage those interest payments by using them to service $50 billion in loans. This still falls short of the scale needed to tilt the field against Putin. Replacing the U.S. military and financial aid provided by President Joe Biden's administration would cost about $45 billion a year for the duration of the war. This is objectively affordable and also rational, given the much higher cost of dealing with a vengeful Russia that takes control of Ukraine. On top of that, Europe will need to do more than pay Trump to continue U.S. aid, if it's to persuade Putin that he has no chance of achieving his maximalist goals in Ukraine. One useful baseline as to how much more is the unused arms-manufacturing capacity that Ukraine has available, but can't to put work, because the government lacks funds to place the orders. This year, the shortfall is $19 billion, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's strategic adviser, Oleksandr Kamyshin. So now we are talking in the range of an extra $64 billion a year for Europe to find, which is not politically sustainable. There are several proposals for getting around the legal hurdles involved in using all of the frozen Russian assets to fill this gap. One elegant solution recently published would allow the entire pool to be offered to Ukraine as loans. 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