Trump Drops Trade Bombshell: Indonesia Gets ‘Full Access’ Pact, India Next In Line? | World News
New Delhi: U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday (July 16) announced that a landmark trade agreement had been sealed with Indonesia, giving American businesses what he described as “full access” to Jakarta’s markets. From copper to cattle feed, nothing would be off-limits, he claimed. And then came the kicker – “India is basically working along that same line.”
That one sentence has sent India’s trade watchers scrambling.
The deal with Indonesia did not come easy. Hasan Nasbi, spokesperson for Indonesia’s President, called it an “extraordinary struggle” by their negotiation team. At the center of the compromise was tariff reduction. Trump had slapped a steep 32% tariff on Indonesian imports just last week. The new agreement brings that number down to 19%. In return, U.S. exporters walk into a wide-open Indonesian market with zero tariffs on key sectors.
Trump said Indonesia has pledged to buy $15 billion worth of U.S. energy, $4.5 billion in U.S. farm goods and 50 Boeing jets. Crucially, Indonesia also agreed to drop tariffs on both agricultural and industrial imports from the United States. The agreement rewrote market access rules.
Trump claimed, “We had no access to any of these countries. Our people could not go in. Now we are getting access because of what we are doing with the tariffs.”
This formula, threat, pressure and concession, may now be unfolding in real time with India. U.S. and Indian negotiators have been locked in extended talks all week, aiming to hammer out a so-called interim trade deal. Trump’s Indonesia-style model may be the blueprint.
But not everyone is buying it.
The Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a prominent policy think tank in New Delhi, has issued a warning – India must tread very carefully.
In its latest policy note, the GTRI accused the Trump camp of “unilateral declarations” that often leap ahead of actual negotiations. “We saw this with Vietnam,” the note said, “where Trump announced a 20% tariff deal, while Vietnamese officials had only agreed to 11%.”
The note urged Indian trade officials to avoid being boxed into vague and handshake-level assurances. “Only a jointly signed, written statement counts,” the GTRI stressed.
Even more alarming, the GTRI flagged the fine print in the Indonesia deal. While U.S. companies gain unrestricted entry into Indonesia, Jakarta still faces a 19% tariff wall when sending goods to the United States. That is a lop-sided deal by any measure.
“If India agrees to something similar,” the note warned, “it could expose Indian agriculture and dairy to a flood of duty-free American imports, without winning anything substantial in return.”
India’s negotiators have been holding the line on agriculture. Sources say that sector remains the most sensitive in the talks. Washington is pushing hard, but New Delhi has refused to budge.
Meanwhile, there is a clock ticking. The United States has floated an August 1 timeline as a soft deadline to seal multiple trade arrangements. The Trump administration claims it is not an ultimatum, just a target to keep things moving. But the real threat is that if no agreement is reached, tariff levels will snap back to what they were on April 2.
That rollback could be punishing. And for India, with a domestic market still navigating post-pandemic inflation and political pressure to protect farmers, the risk of giving away too much is real.
The current draft of the U.S.-India deal remains under wraps. Officials in Delhi have not commented on Trump’s “working on the same lines” claim. But talks are active. Pressure is mounting.
For now, all eyes are on what comes next. Will India push back or play ball?
Trump does not seem to be whispering anymore. He is broadcasting. And when the next deal is announced, India may not have the luxury of saying it did not see it coming.
