CELIOS Rejects Ratification of Indonesia-US Trade Agreement

The Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS) has sent a letter of objection to President Prabowo Subianto regarding the reciprocal trade agreement, or Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART), between Indonesia and the United States, which was agreed upon on 19 February 2026. The Executive Director of CELIOS, Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara, stated that there are 21 points of objection regarding the agreement between the two countries.

“This contains points to prevent ratification, whether in the form of a Presidential Decree or in the form of a law,” he said in a press conference on Monday, 23 February 2026.

The letter has been sent through the Ministry of State Secretariat and was received on Monday. The letter states that approval of the agreement, which has broad and strategic implications, is an act of government that cannot be separated from national legal obligations.

After the ART was agreed upon, the US Supreme Court ruled on 20 February that the reciprocal tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump violated the law. CELIOS also believes that the cooperation in the ART does not have a valid legal basis in the eyes of US law.

Therefore, negotiations or revisions are no longer necessary. Prabowo Subianto is asked to immediately send a notification of termination of the trade agreement to the United States.

CELIOS also plans to sue the government in the State Administrative Court (PTUN) for alleged unlawful acts. “If the notification is not answered within 10 days, we will file a lawsuit in the PTUN,” said Bhima Yudhistira.

CELIOS’s objections also refer to Article 4 of Law Number 24 of 2000 concerning International Agreements. Article 1 states that an agreement between the government and one or more countries, international organizations or other international legal entities based on agreement, and the parties are obliged to carry out the agreement in good faith.

Then in Article 2, the government needs to be guided by national interests and based on the principles of equality, mutual benefit, and pay attention to both national and applicable international law. Bhima said that the problem is that there is an indication that the ART agreement may be without ratification by the DPR or using a law, because there is an option to use a presidential decree.

The problem, said Bhima, is that this agreement covers various aspects such as labor, energy, food, and technology. “This should have been consulted with the DPR first. So it cannot be directly using a presidential decree,” he said.

The points that became CELIOS’s objections include the obligation to import oil and gas from the United States worth US$15 billion, which has the potential to trigger a deficit in the national oil and gas balance. Then the elimination of the Domestic Component Level (TKDN) for most imported goods from the United States violates the Minister of Industry Regulation Number 35 of 2025. In fact, TKDN is to empower domestic industry for development to become high value-added and technology transfer.

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