Indonesia has agreed to purchase over $30 billion worth of US energy commodities, agricultural products and Boeing aircraft as part of its trade deal with the Trump Administration.
The White House announced on Thursday that the United States and Indonesia had finalized a trade deal that locks in tariff rates and non-tariff barriers to commerce.
Officials with the Indonesian government organized a news conference at a hotel in downtown Washington to mark the signing of the reciprocal agreement, which was originally announced last July.
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The accord sets a 19% tariff on Indonesian goods entering the United States. The Southeast Asian country of more than 280 million people had been threatened with a potential 32% levy prior to the agreement.
Open door for US goods
Jakarta agreed to exempt US companies from local content requirements and address and prevent barriers to US agricultural products sold in Indonesia, among other measures, according to a White House fact sheet.
Indonesia also agreed to purchase $33 billion worth of US energy commodities, agricultural products and aviation-related goods, including Boeing aircraft, AFP reported.
After alarming financial markets last spring with a plan for hefty tariffs, Trump has announced numerous accords, as well as a detente with China.
Trump, on February 2, announced a trade deal to reduce tariffs on India.
And earlier this week, he unveiled some $36 billion in commitments from Japan in US investments, part of a trade accord between Washington and Tokyo unveiled in July 2025.
Despite Trump’s aggressive trade policy, the US trade deficit in goods expanded to a new record in 2025, government data showed on Thursday.
The goods deficit stood at $1.24 trillion for all of last year, widening slightly from 2024’s level to its biggest in Commerce Department figures dating back to 1960.
Court ruling
The White House appears to be doing what it can to lock in trade agreements before the US Supreme Court issues its ruling on whether the law the Trump Administration used to impose its tariffs is fit for that purpose.
Tough questioning by judges of the top US court in November suggested the Trump Administration may not have the authority to impose tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), because it contains no references to tariffs – only language on regulating imports during national emergencies declared by the US president.
That led to speculation that the tariffs would be struck down.
US Customs and Border Protection had collected more than $130 billion of tariff revenue under IEEPA in the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years up to December 14, according to one analysis of federal data, which was said to be about 60% of total tariff revenue gathered since the Trump tariffs were imposed.
However, the court may be holding off because the impacts could be far higher and a significant burden for the government to manage.
The Trade Compliance Resource Hub has allegedly said the sum collected could reach $1 trillion by June. So the prospect of dealing with such a massive amount of refunds is something the court may have had to consider, and may even want to try to alleviate.
An adverse ruling raises the spectre of uncertainty and confusion, but there is also an expectation that the Trump Administration would simply shift to other ways to achieve the same result.
Gary Hufbauer, a former Treasury Department official focused on international trade, who is now a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told CNBC yesterday: “The president will come in and use other statutes for virtually the same tariffs.
Hufbauer said there were several other laws the Trump administration could leverage more forcefully if the Supreme Court strikes down the IEEPA tariffs. One of the “easiest” ways was via Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, he was quoted as saying.
Jim Pollard with Agence France-Presse
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