Indonesia keeps signing trade deals its ports cannot back up

Indonesia has been closing trade agreements at speed, but an Australian think tank argues the paperwork will not hold when the world turns rough. Writing for the Lowy Institute's The Interpreter, Arrizal Jaknanihan says Jakarta has fast-tracked new deals with the European Union and Canada to depend less on the American market after Washington raised tariffs. Cutting tariffs, the taxes a country charges on imported goods, is the easy half. Nothing in those deals forces a partner to keep its ports open to Indonesian cargo when a crisis hits.

Singapore has shown what the harder half looks like. On 17 July it started an Agreement on Trade in Essential Supplies with New Zealand. Both sides are now legally bound to keep food, energy and medical goods moving, and to keep ports and customs working during a supply shock. Singapore signed a similar protocol with Australia ten days later. Indonesia has 25 trade agreements in force, including the 2020 deal with Australia that removed almost all tariffs on Indonesian exports there, so the frameworks are already there to upgrade. The piece argues the missing part is a binding promise, not a whole new negotiation.

The catch sits at the dock. On a global index that measures how long ships wait in port, Jakarta's main container terminal at New Priok ranked 121st in 2025 with 15.7 points out of 100. Singapore's port scored a perfect 100 and came first. Surabaya, Semarang and Palembang did worse than Jakarta. Indonesia also placed 63rd out of 139 countries on the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, behind Thailand and Malaysia, and its customs service is still known for slow permits, weak digital records, and an import restriction list, Lartas, that shifts with politics. A country that cannot promise quick unloading is a poor candidate for a deal about keeping goods moving.

Why it matters

If you export, or run a business that depends on imported parts, medicine or fuel, this is the gap in Indonesia's trade wins: the deals cut your tariff bill but do not promise your cargo will still move when a conflict or a shortage closes a route. Watch whether Jakarta adds supply-chain clauses to the agreements it already has with Australia and Singapore, because that is a cheaper fix than a new deal. The port and customs numbers matter to you either way, since every extra day a ship waits ends up in the price of what it carries.