Jakarta. US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday local time a 32 percent "reciprocal" tariff on imports from Indonesia while accusing Jakarta of being unfair in the bilateral trade.

In a Rose Garden announcement, Trump unveiled reciprocal tariffs against many countries, including South Korea (25 percent), Malaysia (24 percent), and Indonesia (32 percent). These countries have been levying much higher rates on American goods, and thus deserve the freshly launched tariffs, according to Trump.

During a news conference at the White House, the businessman-turned-politician presented a chart, claiming that Indonesia had been imposing a whopping 64 percent tariff on US goods entering the Southeast Asian country. The White House’s calculations on what other countries had been charging took into account the latter’s currency manipulation, trade barriers, and what Trump called “other forms of cheating”. Trump claimed that Washington was being "kind" by giving discounts to the reciprocal tariffs.

“In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal. That means they do it to us and we do it to them. Very simple. Can't get any simpler than that,” Trump said in his speech.

“We will charge them approximately half of what they have been charging us. The tariffs will not be a full reciprocal. I could have done that, but it would have been tough for a lot of countries,” Trump said.

The executive order that Trump inked that day showed his disappointment over Indonesia’s tariffs on international trade. Indonesia had levied a 30-percent tariff on ethanol compared to the US' 2.5 percent, the document reads.

Trump’s latest trade policy on Indonesia come as no surprise as Washington had been suffering from a huge trade imbalance.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani not long ago revealed that the US ran a $19.3 billion deficit with Indonesia in 2024. This made Indonesia the fifteenth-largest contributor to the US’ deficit that year. Sri Mulyani even warned that Indonesia could be a future target for Trump’s tariffs. At home, the US made up the lion’s share of Indonesia’s non-oil and gas trade surplus in February, reaching nearly $1.6 billion, according to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS).

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