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New Indonesia-US partnership unlikely to get off ground without reforms, analysts say
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President Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo (left) and United States President Joe Biden talk to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on Nov. 13, 2023, in Washington, DC. Biden and Jokowi discussed a range of bilateral issues during their meeting. (-/Win McNamee/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP)
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ndonesia’s recently elevated status as the United States’ comprehensive strategic partner remains insufficient as a means to boost Jakarta’s standing among Washington’s trading partners, analysts have said.
Indonesia was still in dire need of reforming some of its trading mechanisms, and the freshly announced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) offered little concrete cooperation that could upgrade the scanty bilateral trade value between Indonesia and the US, analysts said.
Earlier this week, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited the White House in Washington, DC, where he met with his US counterpart Joe Biden in preparation for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. The visit saw the two leaders announce a “new era” of cooperation through the CSP, which entails cooperation at the highest level of government.
Twenty-two programs were included in the CSP, including economic cooperation bolstering Jakarta’s emerging enterprises, climate and energy sectors, defense cooperation and people-to-people collaboration. Over US$15 billion in pledges have also been made.
But these fresh commitments to strengthen the economic relationship between Indonesia and the US were still lackluster, economists said at a briefing at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Wednesday. They called for restraint against any early celebrations.
Read also: Indonesia, US herald ‘new era’ of cooperation
For one, economic cooperation with the US is typically heavy on business-to-business (B2B) agreements, instead of government-to-government (G2G) pacts, the former of which are scarcely seen in the new CSP.
