Jakarta. Senior minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan revealed Monday more details of his recent visit to New York, which included an impromptu meeting with US President Joe Biden.

Luhut recently headed to New York to attend the Bloomberg Global Business Forum, among other things. On the margins of the conference, Bloomberg’s co-founder Michael Bloomberg introduced Luhut to Biden. In a social media post, Luhut said that he was surprised that Biden had remembered him from a past phone call with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. 

“I did not expect that he [Biden] still remembers me. We once talked over the phone -- together with President Jokowi,” Luhut said.

The Indonesian investment affairs czar did not say much about the Biden meeting, nor did he say if the impromptu meeting managed to touch on some issues. However, Luhut said that he later met with Biden’s aide Amos Hochstein at the White House in a meeting that talked of Indonesia’s government transition. Luhut told Hotschein that there should be nothing to worry about when it comes to the shift of power from Jokowi to Prabowo. 

“We discussed a lot about Indonesia’s upcoming government transition. I told [Hochstein] that the transition would go very well because both [Jokowi and Prabowo] really know each other. They are also supportive of each other’s programs,” Luhut said.

Luhut said that he also had told Hochstein that Prabowo -- who is set to assume office on Oct. 20 -- would adopt a similar foreign policy style. Back when he was still an election candidate, Prabowo had said that he wanted to embrace what he called a “good neighbor policy” in his international interactions. In other words, Prabowo intends to maintain good ties with all, saying that making a thousand friends is not enough while having“one enemy is too many”. 

As his inauguration nears, Prabowo has also been quite active in making international trips to meet world leaders. However, he has yet to visit Biden at the White House although the two conversed over the phone back in March. Biden at the time was congratulating Prabowo on his election triumph. 

“The foreign policies in the upcoming president-elect’s era will be as friendly as the previous government. We have seen how President-Elect [Prabowo] has visited a number of neighboring countries,” Luhut said.

The US today is also about to witness a shift in presidency as Biden’s veep Kamala Harris is going against former president Donald Trump for the top job at the White House. National Development Planning Minister Suharso Monoarfa not long ago revealed that Indonesia was keeping a close eye on the outcomes of the US government, particularly from an economic policy standpoint.

Last year, Indonesia-US agreed to level up their ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership. 

The US is also a major foreign investor in the country. The government reported that American investors put around $2 billion in Indonesia throughout the first half of 2024. This made the US Indonesia’s fourth-largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) that period. Indonesia-US trade also reached almost $21.2 billion in January-July 2024. Indonesia enjoyed a $7.5 billion surplus when trading with the US, data showed.

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