The United States Trade Representative (USTR) decided Indonesia is no longer in the list of developing country. The new policy has been published on Feb. 10. The country has tightened the criteria of developing countries that are entitled to exempt de minimis and negligible import volumes for the imposition of anti-subsidy or countervailing duty (CVD) tariffs.

“The exclusion of Indonesia in the category means that the competitiveness of our products must be improved so that we can continue to win the Indonesian export market,” said trade minister Agus Suparmanto, by adding the country’ status as a recipient country of the Generalized System of Preferences facility (GSP) is not affected.

According to USTR, three new criteria applied by the US to developing countries are based on Gross National Income according to the World Bank version (more than US$12,375 a year), the total share of world trade above 0.5 percent (previously 2 percent), and developing countries which are member of the European Union, OECD and G20. In 2018, the value of Indonesia’ exports that received GSP facilities rose 10 percent from US$1.9 billion to $2.2 billion. While in the January – November 2019 period, the value exports with the GSP facility rose by 20 percent from $2 billion to $2.5 billion compared to the same period the previous year.