When President Trump announced new reciprocal tariffs in early April to counter foreign trade barriers to U.S. exports, Indonesia was among the countries hardest hit. The Trump Administration proposed a 32% levy on all Indonesian exports to the U.S., which would constitute a significant blow to the island nation’s economy, given the United States’ status as Indonesia’s second-largest trading partner after China. Indonesia exports $28 billion in goods annually to the U.S. but imports only $10 billion in American products. As a result, Trump’s proposed tariff constitutes a serious impediment to recently elected Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s publicly announced goal of 8% annual economic growth for his country.

Subianto’s strategy is a careful balancing act between the U.S. and China, Indonesia’s top trading partner. His foreign policy approach, which he has dubbed “zero enemies, one thousand friends,” reflects a desire to stay on friendly terms with both countries, threading the diplomatic needle by maintaining cooperative economic and security ties with Beijing and Washington.

This explains his conciliatory tone following the announcement of the Trump tariffs, in contrast to the belligerence and retaliatory measures taken by other nations, including Canada and China. “People who have known me for a long time would say I’m the most nationalist person…but we have to be realistic,” he stated, indicating Indonesia would be willing to negotiate a rollback of its protectionist policies designed to build up domestic manufacturing. Trump’s subsequent 90-day pause gives Subianto’s negotiators time to come to a mutually beneficial agreement to avoid the proposed levy.

However, complicating Subianto’s effort to cozy up to the Trump administration while maintaining a strong economic and security relationship with China is one recent authoritarian move that has American diplomats in Foggy Bottom concerned. Just ten days after taking office, in October of 2024, Subianto imprisoned Thomas Lembong, who had just served as campaign manager and primary advisor to his election opponent Anies Baswedan, on blatantly trumped-up charges of corruption involving a sugar import permit issued nearly a decade earlier when he was minister of trade. Lembong’s granting of the import permit allegedly violated a 2004 regulation barring imports when Indonesia enjoys a surplus of a product, but contemporary projections of a significant shortfall in production more than justified Lembong’s actions as minister.

Public records show 21 similar permits were granted, and Lembong hasn’t been accused of receiving anything in return. The corruption charges appear to be a purely political prosecution intended to sideline the chief advisor to Subianto’s main electoral rival.

Lembong, who is Harvard-educated and has strong U.S. connections, has been imprisoned for eight months in Indonesia’s notoriously overcrowded and filthy Salemba Detention Center, and the trial, led by Subianto’s attorney general, has dragged on since March. Although hardball tactics deployed against political opponents are certainly nothing new in Indonesia, according to international human rights groups, Subianto’s delicate position with the Trump administration and the coming trade negotiations have put additional focus on this case.

Ironically, after Subianto was forcibly discharged from the Indonesian military in 1998 due to numerous allegations of human rights abuses in his special forces unit, the U.S. State Department subjected him to a travel ban for twenty years, only lifted during Trump’s first term in 2020. Since Trump has himself been the victim of lawfare and has seen the incarceration of close political allies on the slimmest of pretexts, it would probably be in President Subianto’s interests to abandon the strongman tactics if he hopes to reach an equitable trade deal and remain on friendly terms with Trump. Given his record, he might also want to avoid further scrutiny from Foggy Bottom.

Rob Wasinger is co-founder of The Ragnar Group. He was the first White House liaison at the State Department during the first Trump administration and was a Harvard classmate of Tom Lembong.