The Ministry Of Industry Wants The Spike In Steel Imports To TPT Due To The US-China Tariff War

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) has warned of a potential spike in imported products in the steel and aluminum industry, textiles and textile products (TPT) and footwear industries, agro industries and various industries due to trade tariff wars between the United States (US) and China.

Deputy Minister of Industry (Wamenperin) Faisol Riza said the potential for a spike in products was due to a trade diversion or dumping from China.

"The impact of trade tensions between the US and China (China) will potentially encourage the trade diversion in response to the ever-increasing trade barriers," said Faisol at a Working Meeting (Raker) with Commission VII at the Parliament Complex, Senayan, Jakarta, Wednesday, July 2.

Faisol said that the TPT and footwear sectors had made a significant contribution to national manufacturing exports, which in 2024 showed that the US was the main market of the two sectors.

TPT Indonesia's market share to the US reached 40.6 percent and footwear was 34.2 percent. This shows that almost half of textile exports and 1/3 of national footwear exports depend on Uncle Sam's country's request.

Seeing the high tension between the US and China and the decline in China's market share in the US, this situation poses challenges in the form of increasing potential dumping of Chinese products to the domestic market.

"This shows an increase in the import value of TPT from China to Indonesia which reached 8.84 percent, while imports of footwear products jumped to 30.89 percent in January-April 2025," said Faisol.

In the agro industry sector, there are indications of a trade diversion of Chinese products from the US. His party noted that until April 2025, Chinese agro-product exports to the US decreased by 1.17 billion US dollars or around 7 percent.

At the same time, Indonesia actually recorded a surge in imports of agro products from China of 477,000 US dollars, an increase of about 30 percent.

"There are at least seven HS posts that show a significant increase in imports, starting from HS 23, namely food and animal feed industry waste, an increase of about 11 percent, HS 03 fish and krustacean and HS 18 cocoa and processing of increasing imports of more than 100 percent. The highest jump occurred in fishery products, which was around 105.4 percent," he explained.

According to Faisol, this condition is an important signal for the Indonesian government and nation to pay close attention to the impact of the diversion trade on the national import structure as well as opportunities to map the potential and challenges of the domestic agro industry.