KTT G20 Osaka

Indonesia as an advanced country certainly has been dreamed of by most of the Indonesian people since the birth of independence in 1945. The dream has slowly begun to be achieved recently since the United States’ recognition that Indonesia is no longer classified as a developing country. The United States Trade Representative Office (USTR) revokes special preferences for the list of World Trade Organization (WTO) members including Indonesia in the list of developing countries. That is, in the eyes of the US, Indonesia has become a developed country.

The Coordinating Minister (Coordinating Minister) for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartanto said this would have an impact on developing country facilities. “The impact is, of course, the facilities, Indonesia which was previously a developing country will be reduced, yes we are not worried,” Airlangga said in his office as quoted by Kontan.co.id, Friday (2/21/2020).

In addition, exports of Indonesian goods will be subject to higher tariffs than other developing countries. For example, import taxes that the US regulates on Indonesian goods will be higher, including import duties. “But not necessarily, we are not worried,” Airlangga said.

In the new US policy that has been in effect since 10 February 2020, Indonesia has been excluded from the list of Developing and Least-Developed Countries so that the Special Differential Treatment (SDT) available in the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures is no longer valid for Indonesia. As a result, de minimis thresholds for margin subsidies so that an anti-subsidy investigation can be stopped is reduced to less than 1 percent and not less than 2 percent.

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In addition, the criteria for negligible import volumes available to developing countries no longer apply to Indonesia. The impact is indeed this policy tends to make Indonesian trade stubborn. Even though Indonesia has been surplus from the US. Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), Indonesia’s trade surplus with the US in January 2020 amounted to 1.01 billion US dollars, this figure grew when compared to the surplus of the same period last year which was 804 million US dollars.

The data also mentioned that the US became the second largest country in Indonesia’s non-oil and gas export share of 1.62 billion US dollars in January 2020.


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