Jakarta. Indonesia is pointing out some cracks in the G20, which includes the world's major economies, as US President Donald Trump shows lack of interest in multilateralism or taking part in alliances to pursue a common goal.

Trump's recent actions ranging from back-and-forth trade tariffs to withdrawals from global pacts have sent a signal on US' major shift in its foreign diplomacy. Trump's treasury secretary Scott Bessent's absence in a recent South Africa meeting -- which gathered G20's finance ministers and top central bankers last month -- further proved this point. US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, however, was in Cape Town. China, India, Japan, and Canada did not send their finance ministers, according to media reports. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously had also skipped a G20 foreign ministerial meeting.

Indonesia's Finance Minister Sri Mulyani recently briefed the press on how the world was undergoing immense changes following Trump's return, while calling the press' attention to the strains in the G20.

"The US had always been promoting multilateralism in the past, but it is now taking an unilateral approach. The recent finance ministers' meeting reflected this situation, as seen in the massive no-shows. ... We [Indonesia] were at the G20's helm in 2022, but we managed to gather everyone despite the Ukraine war, even on the level of head of states," Sri Mulyani told reporters in Jakarta on Thursday.

Sri Mulyani appointed Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Djiwandono to the Cape Town conference, citing domestic affairs as the reason for her non-attendance. Thomas, who is also President Prabowo Subianto's nephew, told the same presser that the G20 finance meeting ended without a communique or consensus, saying that the group might not be as united as before.

"So the [South Africa] talks zeroed in on multilateralism, climate finance, multilateral development banks, ... as well as global taxation. The US felt that it could not accept the conclusions across all four agenda. That's why there was no communique in the G20 meeting," Thomas said.

He added: "During Indonesia's presidency, we [the G20] managed to secure a communique despite the war. A few years later, we failed to have one because of the drastic geopolitical changes."

In 2022, Indonesia assumed G20's rotating presidency and picked the tourist hotspot of Bali to hold the leader's summit. Russia had launched a full-scale invasion in Ukraine in February that year. The forum had also came out with a G20 Bali Leaders' Declaration that openly criticized Russia's invasion. The document wrote that the members had reiterated its national positions and deplored "in the strongest terms" Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Russia is a G20 member, while Ukraine isn't. Even so, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy virtually addressed the G20 leaders at the Bali summit. His Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin sent his top diplomat Sergey Lavrov instead.

Indonesia is also bracing itself for possible Trump's tariffs. Sri Mulyani warned that Indonesia could be a future target for Trump's tariffs as Washington continued to run a negative trade balance with Jakarta. US' deficit with the Southeast Asian country reached $19.3 billion in 2024. This made Indonesia as the US' fifteenth-largest deficit contributor that year, data showed.

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