<![CDATA[The unilateral tariff policy of the United States (US) under President Donald Trump has significantly changed the global trade landscape in recent years. The spirit of protectionism, with its America First political promise and Make America Great Again! (MAGA) political program, marks this policy, which has created inequality in trade relations between developed and developing countries. The most obvious impact on Indonesia is the difference in tariff treatment between US and Indonesian products, where Indonesian exports will be subject to a 19 percent tariff covering 8 key terms of the agreement. Trump's MAGA doctrine demonstrates chauvinist nationalism adopted as an instrument of protectionism to maintain US hegemony in its trade policy, where the economic aspect of foreign policy is an essential instrument through economic means to achieve geopolitical interests and exploit geopolitical developments to ensure domestic economic prosperity. Therefore, US liberal democracy has been destroyed by the presence of Trump and his supporting large capitalist cronies who have turned the state into an instrument of capitalist interests. The tariff policy actually emphasizes the shift in power to an oligarchic state serving a handful of economic elites and demonstrates the ruling class in the US by shifting competitive capital to monopoly capital. The enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) as a political instrument strengthened the alliance between oligarchic capitalism, militarism, and right-wing nationalism in the US domestic landscape. The fiscal package included tax cuts for the upper class and upward wealth redistribution, which cut subsidies for the poor, the disabled, and social security. This zero-sum logic, a product of US expansionist capitalism, uses tariffs and trade policies as tools to subjugate developing countries.]]>
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