The United States and Indonesia announced they have signed a trade deal, with Indonesia agreeing to open its borders wider to American goods, the New York Times reported. The deal, announced on Thursday, includes zero tariffs on virtually all U.S. exports to Indonesia and a 19 percent tariff on Indonesian goods. It formalizes an agreement the two countries made last July, making Indonesia the third country in Southeast Asia to lock in lower tariffs after Malaysia and Cambodia. Mr. Trump had threatened Indonesia with a 32 percent tariff at one point last year.
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Indonesian and U.S. companies on Wednesday signed deals worth $38.4 billion ahead of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto's meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to sign a final trade pact, the Indonesian government said in a statement, Reuters reported. The 11 deals, signed at a dinner for Prabowo hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, were for partnerships in mining, energy, agribusiness, textiles, furniture and technology sectors, according to the statement.
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Earlier this month, President Trump found the latest pressure point to extend his leverage over Canada: a new bridge connecting the country to the United States that is expected to open this year, the New York Times reported. Trump threatened to block the opening, just hours after the billionaire owner of a competing U.S.-Canada bridge met with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary. It wasn’t that the president was particularly passionate about the new bridge.
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Higher U.S. tariffs are not the main reason for a surge in Chinese exports to the eurozone, Africa and other parts of Asia, according to economists at the European Central Bank, the Wall Street Journal reported. While President Trump last year hiked tariffs on imports from countries around the world, the duties faced by Chinese businesses are higher than most other countries. That has led to a sharp fall in Chinese exports to the world’s largest economy.
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Cuba's Varadero peninsula is a postcard of a tropical paradise: turquoise waters, powder-white sand and palm trees, Reuters reported. But the resort's beaches, once crowded with tourists enjoying the sand and sunshine, began to clear out shortly after Cuba announced on February 8 it was running out of jet fuel. And they may not be coming back anytime soon. A Reuters survey of hotel and travel companies, airlines and on-island tourism industry workers found virtually every sector suddenly crippled by the fuel shortage.
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The Trump administration reached a trade deal with Taiwan on Thursday, with Taiwan agreeing to remove or reduce 99% of its tariff barriers, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said, the Associated Press reported. The agreement comes as the U.S. remains reliant on Taiwan for its production of computer chips, the exporting of which contributed to a trade imbalance of nearly $127 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, according to the Census Bureau. Most of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. will be taxed at a 15% rate, the USTR's office said.
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The GOP-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution on Wednesday designed to roll back President Trump’s tariffs on Canada, as a half-dozen Republicans joined Democrats in rebuking the administration’s signature economic policy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The House voted 219-211 to approve a Democratic resolution that would invalidate the emergency declaration that underpins Trump’s tariffs on Canada.
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The European Union must simplify its regulations to make the bloc more competitive against the likes of the United States and China, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said ahead of summits of EU political ‌and business leaders, Reuters reported. EU growth has been persistently lower than that of the United States over the past two decades, with EU productivity and innovation, ‌particularly in fields like AI, falling short. "Let me take the U.S. example again. One financial system, one financial capital," von der Leyen said on Wednesday.
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A loan deal is turning into a problem for German investor Lars Windhorst: The investment company Istar Capital is accusing him in a lawsuit of failing to pay several million euros. To avoid payments, he allegedly even founded new companies and falsified payment receipts. This is according to court documents that Istar filed in the Southern District of New York at the end of last week , and which t-online has obtained. The documents seen by t-online so far contain no evidence to support Windhorst's claim that the lawsuit will soon be resolved.
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The U.S. is moving to reduce its so-called reciprocal tariff on goods from Bangladesh and offering a new exemption for textile products, the White House said Monday, in the latest adjustment for the South Asian country, Bloomberg News reported. President Donald Trump will lower the country’s overall reciprocal tariff to 19%, after previously slashing the rate from 37% to 20% last year. But the deal also includes a mechanism that allows certain textile merchandise to receive a full exemption from the levies, providing a break to Bangladesh’s apparel industry.
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