
Trump says Indonesia to pay 19% tariffs, buy 50 Boeing jets under trade deal
Indonesian goods entering the United States would face a 19% tariff, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform. This is significantly below the 32% level the president earlier threatened.
'As part of the Agreement, Indonesia has committed to purchasing $15 Billion Dollars in US Energy, $4.5 Billion Dollars in American Agricultural Products, and 50 Boeing Jets, many of them 777's,' Trump wrote.
Boeing shares closed down 0.2% after the announcement.
'They are going to pay 19% and we are going to pay nothing … we will have full access into Indonesia, and we have a couple of those deals that are going to be announced,' Trump said outside the Oval Office earlier.
Indonesia's total trade with the US – totalling just under $40bn in 2024 – does not rank in the top 15, but it has been growing. US exports to Indonesia rose 3.7% last year, while imports from there were up 4.8%, leaving the US with a goods trade deficit of nearly $18bn.
The Trump administration has been under pressure to wrap up trade pacts after promising a flurry of deals recently, as countries sought talks with Washington to avoid the US president's tariff plans.
But Trump has so far only unveiled other deals with Britain and Vietnam, alongside an agreement to temporarily lower tit-for-tat levies with China.
Last week, Trump renewed his threat of a 32% levy on Indonesian goods, saying in a letter to the country's leadership that this would take effect 1 August.
It remains unclear when the lower tariff level announced on Tuesday will take effect for Indonesia. The period over which its various purchases will take place was also not specified.
Trump said on social media that under the deal, which was finalised after he spoke with Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto, goods that have been transshipped to avoid higher duties would face steeper levies.
He separately told reporters that other deals were in the works, including with India, while talks with the European Union are continuing.
Indonesia's former vice minister for foreign affairs, Dino Patti Djalal, told a Foreign Policy event Tuesday that government insiders had indicated they were happy with the new deal.
Trump in April imposed a 10% tariff on almost all trading partners, while announcing plans to eventually hike this level for dozens of economies, including the EU and Indonesia.
But days before the steeper duties, customised to each economy, were due to take effect, he pushed the deadline back from 9 July to 1 August. This marked his second postponement of the elevated levies.
Instead, since early last week, Trump has been sending letters to partners, setting out the tariff levels they would face come August. So far, he has sent more than 20 such letters including to the EU, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.
Trump has unveiled blanket tariffs on trading partners in part to address what his administration deems as unfair practices that hurt US businesses.
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report
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The Independent
a minute ago
- The Independent
The Wall Street Journal's Trump story has united MAGA on the Epstein saga over their universal hatred of one thing
More than a week after Donald Trump's base looked like it might be fracturing over the Justice Department's 'no client list' Jeffrey Epstein memo, MAGA world got its 'perfect offramp' in the ongoing saga thanks to the Wall Street Journal's latest bombshell. While on the surface the WSJ's story – which the president fought tooth and nail to keep from being published – should have inflamed the turmoil on the right as it further exposed just how close the president once was with the deceased sex trafficker, it instead offered MAGA pundits and influencers the chance to join Trump in lambasting their shared enemy – the mainstream press. Throughout Thursday, anticipation grew that the WSJ would be dropping a blockbuster report that threatened to blow up the already burgeoning crisis for the Trump administration, especially when it was reported ahead of the story's publication that the president was desperately trying to keep the story from seeing the light of day. When the WSJ finally pulled the trigger, the story didn't disappoint. The outlet revealed that in the early 2000s, Trump wrote a sexually suggestive birthday letter to Epstein in which the future president told the disgraced financier 'we have certain things in common.' The 'bawdy' card, which was included in a 2003 album put together by Epstein's since-jailed partner Ghislaine Maxwell, also featured a hand-drawn outline of a naked woman with Trump's signature appearing in the woman's pubic area. The text of the letter, which the WSJ said was typewritten, featured an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein. 'Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that? … Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,' the letter reportedly stated. 'This is not me. This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street Journal story,' Trump told the WSJ in a statement. 'I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures of women. It's not my language. It's not my words.' (Despite Trump's claims, doodles of his have been included in books for sale in the past.) Following the story's publication, the president – who had started calling the Epstein Files a 'hoax' after the WSJ began contacting him about the report – went on the warpath, threatening to sue the newspaper and Rupert Murdoch, the on-again/off-again Trump ally who owns the publication, and Fox News. 'Mr. Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but, obviously, did not have the power to do so,' Trump grumbled on Truth Social. 'The Editor of The Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Karoline Leavitt, and by President Trump, that the letter was a FAKE, but Emma Tucker didn't want to hear that. Instead, they are going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway.' The president would follow that up by saying he looked 'forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his 'pile of garbage' newspaper,' adding that it 'will be an interesting experience!!!' At the same time, members of his administration and his family quickly joined the pile-on. With the president going off about how he was 'going to sue his a** off' over the 'FAKE letter,' whatever schism that had formed in the MAGA universe over the administration's handling of the Epstein files quickly melted away as prominent conservative personalities jumped onboard the media hate train. One by one, they lined up to agree with Trump that the letter the WSJ reported on was a fabrication, while blasting both the paper and Murdoch for publishing the story in the first place. 'This is the dumbest attempted hit piece I've ever read,' fumed Megyn Kelly, who just days earlier had blasted Fox News hosts and MAGA influencers for trying to move on from the Epstein controversy. The former Fox star has also been extremely critical of the administration's handling of the Epstein case, joining forces with ex-colleague Tucker Carlson in suggesting Attorney General Pam Bondi is 'covering up' evidence. At the same time, Kelly has recently pushed various conspiracy theories about Epstein working for Israeli intelligence – all while admitting that she has no evidence to back her claims. Former 'first buddy' Elon Musk, who has said the administration's conclusion that Epstein died by suicide and didn't maintain a 'client list' was the 'final straw' for him, also came to the president's defense over the WSJ's 'hit piece.' Despite repeatedly claiming that Trump was withholding documents related to the deceased sex offender because they implicated him, Musk dismissed the latest report. 'It really doesn't sound like something Trump would say tbh,' the Tesla CEO tweeted, later sharing a summary from his AI chatbot Grok that cast doubt on the birthday card's authenticity. Podcaster and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, who has been at the forefront of pushing the administration to release more Epstein documents amid the MAGA meltdown, unleashed a series of posts raging about the WSJ while peddling conspiracies about the paper's reporting. 'And, by the way, there is a scandal here. The scandal is in who wrote the story. Oh, yeah, baby,' Johnson crowed on his podcast Friday. Even one of Murdoch's employees decided to get in on the action and cheer on the president's threat against the 94-year-old right-wing media titan. 'Sue them into oblivion,' conservative commentator Riley Gaines posted Thursday night, sharing the president's Truth Social tirade against Murdoch. Gaines, the former collegiate swimmer who entered the spotlight as an anti-trans activist, hosts a podcast for Outkick and Fox Nation – which are both owned by Murdoch's media empire. She is also a frequent presence on Fox News and has served as a guest co-host on the network's panel shows. Meanwhile, Gaines' backing of Trump's threatened lawsuit against Murdoch comes just a day after she blasted the president for calling his supporters 'stupid' and 'foolish' for continuing to demand the release of the Epstein files, which he asserted was a 'hoax' perpetrated by Democrats. 'Was it stupid & foolish when he campaigned on releasing the files? Are Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Alina Habba all foolish & stupid for peddling this for the past 6 months?' Gaines reacted, referencing Trump officials who had promised to share 'shocking' findings about Epstein only to later back off. 'Why on earth is he doing this?' As mainstream journalists and pundits have observed, the WSJ story couldn't come at a better time for Trump as it feeds perfectly into the right's reflexive anti-media stance – regardless of the explosive details contained in the report. 'This WSJ story just might be the best thing to happen to Trump since the Epstein story exploded,' Politico's Rachael Bade noted on X. 'For the first time, those who most vocally criticized him/his admins for not releasing enough info, are now rallying to his support. (At least for now... we shall see if this holds.),' she added. 'Seemed unlikely just a few hours ago, but looks like Trump is getting some in MAGA to embrace his new favorite phrase: the 'Epstein hoax.' Is a reminder that nothing unites Rs more than complaints abt the media!' During Friday's broadcast of MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough pointed out that this offered MAGA influencers the 'perfect offramp' to stop focusing on the Epstein scandal. 'Oh, look, look what the big, bad Wall Street Journal did to Donald Trump. He's once again a victim of the lame-stream media,' the MSNBC star added, mimicking pro-Trump voices.


Daily Mail
2 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Trump escalates EU tariffs deal demands while keeping cripplingly high penalty on a key industry
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The Guardian
2 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump administration to destroy nearly $10m in contraceptives
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July. 'It is unacceptable that the State Department would move forward with the destruction of more than $9m in taxpayer-funded family planning commodities purchased to support women in crisis settings, including war zones and refugee camps,' Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator from New Hampshire, said in a statement. Shaheen and Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, have introduced legislation to stop the destruction. 'This is a waste of US taxpayer dollars and an abdication of US global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths,' added Shaheen, who in June sent a letter to secretary of state Marco Rubio about the matter. The department decided to destroy the contraceptives because it could not sell them to any 'eligible buyers', in part because of US laws and rules that prohibit sending US aid to organizations that provide abortion services, counsel people about the procedure or advocate for the right to it overseas, according to the state department spokesperson. Most of the contraceptives have less than 70% of their shelf life left before they expire, the spokesperson said, and rebranding and selling the contraceptives could cost several million dollars. However, the aide who visited the warehouse said that the earliest expiration date they saw on the contraceptives was 2027, and that two-thirds of the contraceptives did not have any USAID labels that would need to be rebranded. The eradication of the contraceptives is part of the Trump administration's months-long demolition of the Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid in the world. After the unofficial 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) erased 83% of USAID's programs, Rubio announced in June that USAID's entire international workforce would be abolished and its foreign assistance programs would be moved to the State Department. The agency will be replaced by an organization called America First. In total, the funding cuts to USAID could lead to more than 14m additional deaths by 2030, according to a recent study published in the journal the Lancet. A third of those deaths could be children. 'If you have an unintended pregnancy and you end up having to seek unsafe abortion, it's quite likely that you will die,' said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global family planning organization that works in nearly 40 countries. 'If you're not given the means to space or limit your births, you're putting your life at risk or your child's life at risk.' MSI tried to purchase the contraceptives from the US government, Shaw said. But the government would only accept full price – which Shaw said the agency could not afford, given that MSI would also have to shoulder the expense of transportingthe contraceptives and the fact that they are inching closer to their expiration date, which could affect MSI's ability to distribute them. The state department spokesperson did not specifically respond to a request for comment on Shaw's allegation, but MSI does provide abortions as part of its global work, which may have led the department to rule it out as an 'eligible buyer'. In an internal survey, MSI programs in 10 countries reported that, within the next month, they expect to be out of stock or be on the brink of being out of stock of at least one contraceptive method. The countries include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Senegal, Kenya and Sierra Leone. Shaw expects the stock to be incinerated. 'The fact that the contraceptives are going to be burned when there's so much need – it's just egregious,' she said. 'It's disgusting.' The Department of State spokesperson did not respond to a request for information on the planned method of destruction. The destruction of the contraceptives is, to Shaw, emblematic of the overall destruction of a system that once provided worldwide help to women and families. USAID funding is threaded through so much of the global supply chain of family planning aid that, without its money, the chain has come apart. In Mali, Shaw said, USAID helped pay for the gas used by the vehicles that transport contraceptives from a warehouse. Without the gas money, the vehicles were stuck – and so were the contraceptives. 'I've worked in this sector for over 20 years and I've never seen anything on this scale,' Shaw said. 'The speed at which they've managed to dismantle excellent work and really great progress – I mean, it's just vanished in weeks.' Other kinds of assistance are also reportedly being wasted. This week, the Atlantic reported that almost 500 metric tons of emergency food were expiring and would be incinerated, rather than being used to feed about 1.5 million children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, almost 800,000 Mpox vaccines that were supposed to be sent to Africa are now unusable because they are too close to their expiration date, according to Politico. The cuts to foreign aid are slated to deepen. Early Friday morning, Congress passed a bill to claw back roughly $8bn that had been earmarked for foreign assistance. 'It's not just about an empty shelf,' Shaw said. 'It's about unfulfilled potential. It's about a girl having to drop out of school. It's about someone having to seek an unsafe abortion and risking their lives. That's what it's really about.'