TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsTrump’s letter makes BRICS a strategic bet for Indonesia
BRICS, though not a replacement for existing alliances, must be used as leverage.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
President Prabowo Subianto looks on during the first plenary session of the BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 6. BRICS leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday are expected to decry United States President Donald Trump's “indiscriminate“ trade tariffs, saying they are illegal and risk hurting the global economy. (AFP/Mauro Pimentel)
A
s President Prabowo Subianto smiled and exchanged words with Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and India’s Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro last week, the symbolism was striking.
Just days earlier, a different kind of message had arrived in Jakarta, one not of solidarity, but of warning. A formal letter from United States President Donald Trump, dated July 7, informed President Prabowo that the US would impose a 32 percent tariff on all Indonesian goods entering the US beginning August 1. The letter cited a long-standing trade deficit, Indonesian tariff and non-tariff barriers and an imbalanced relationship.
It was blunt, unilateral and delivered before Indonesia had made any aggressive pivot toward the BRICS alliance. This moment of Prabowo posing confidently with Global South leaders while facing pressure from the US captures Indonesia’s geopolitical tightrope: a rising power looking for balance, but reminded that power asymmetries still bite hard.
Back in Indonesia, another event was unfolding. Brazilian climber Juliana Marins died on Mount Rinjani in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. Brazilian authorities, citing negligence, signaled their intent to take legal action.
At the same summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin was notably absent. Brazil, as a signatory of the Rome Statute, would have been legally obligated to arrest him due to an International Criminal Court warrant for his role in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
These stories reveal how fragile this “alternative world order” truly is, riddled with contradiction, national interests and legal constraints.
Indonesia’s BRICS membership reflects its ambition to diversify partnerships, amplify its global voice and push back, gently but deliberately, against Western-dominated financial and geopolitical forums.
