Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 19 February 2026 Presidents Trump and Prabowo finalised the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) between the United States and Indonesia. The deal locks the US reciprocal tariff on Indonesian imports at 19% (down from the 32% threatened in April 2025), with 0% on a defined list of products and a textile/apparel quota benchmarked to US-cotton/MMF inputs. Indonesia commits to remove export restrictions on all industrial commodities — explicitly including critical minerals across the full value chain — and to grant US investors national treatment in mineral exploration, mining, processing and export. Indonesia also agrees to eliminate tariff barriers on >99% of US-origin goods, while a Freeport-McMoRan MOU extends the Grasberg copper-mine licence (~USD 10bn/yr revenue, world's 2nd largest copper mine) and a parallel commercial package totalling ~USD 33bn (energy USD 15bn, aerospace incl. Boeing USD 13.5bn, agriculture USD 4.5bn) is signed alongside.

On 10 November 2025 the Mexican government published a decree in the Diario Oficial de la Federación (DOF) modifying the Tarifa de la Ley de los Impuestos Generales de Importación y de Exportación (LIGIE) to raise most-favoured-nation import tariffs on sugar and sugar-derivative products (raw, refined, liquid and invert sugar, and related high-sugar-content goods across roughly eight six-digit tariff subheadings) to between 156% and 210.44% ad valorem, replacing the prior specific-duty regime of USD 0.33–0.39 per kilogram. The decree entered into force 11 November 2025, the day after publication, and applies to imports from WTO members that lack a preferential trade agreement with Mexico. The Secretaría de Economía framed the increase as protection for the domestic sugarcane agro-industry against a national oversupply and falling international reference prices.

At the APEC Busan summit on 30 October 2025, Presidents Trump and Xi reached the "Economic and Trade Arrangement Between the United States and the People's Republic of China," subsequently implemented on the US side by the executive order "Modifying Reciprocal Tariff Rates Consistent with the Economic and Trade Arrangement" (issued 4 November 2025; effective 12:01 am EST on 10 November 2025; published in the Federal Register on 7 November 2025 as 90 FR 50729 / 2025-19826) and on the Chinese side by a series of MOFCOM and State Council Tariff Commission announcements (notably MOFCOM 2025 No. 90 of 8–9 November 2025). The arrangement is structurally parallel to the already-filed US-Japan, US-Korea and US-Taiwan framework deals but uniquely material because it freezes the highest-stakes bilateral tariff and export-control confrontation of the post-2024 reset. Core US commitments: (i) reciprocal-tariff "additional ad valorem rate of duty" on PRC-origin goods reduced from a prior 20% IEEPA-fentanyl + 10% IEEPA-reciprocal stack to a 10% rate (i.e., the prior 24% / 34% scheduled escalation is suspended), extended through 10 November 2026; (ii) US BIS suspends the so-called "affiliates rule" expanding entity-list controls to majority-owned subsidiaries of listed Chinese firms; (iii) USTR pauses Section 301 maritime / shipbuilding / logistics countermeasures against Chinese vessels for one year. Core PRC commitments: (i) MOFCOM suspends for one year (until 10 November 2026) the 9 October 2025 extraterritorial rare-earth export-control package — including controls on REE processing equipment, lithium-battery manufacturing equipment, and superhard materials; (ii) PRC suspends retaliatory tariffs on a broad swath of US agricultural products through 31 December 2026; (iii) commitment to purchase ≥25 million metric tonnes of US soybeans annually in 2026-2028 and to resume sorghum and log imports; (iv) suspension of MOFCOM antitrust and "unreliable-entity" probes against named US semiconductor and chip-equipment companies; (v) cooperation on fentanyl precursor enforcement. The arrangement does not repeal underlying authorities (IEEPA tariffs, MOFCOM export-control list, Entity List) — it is a calibrated mutual freeze with a one-year sunset and quarterly review checkpoints.

Decree 38/2025 reduces Argentina's agricultural export duties (retenciones) across all major grains and oilseeds effective January 27, 2025, through June 30, 2025. Soybean duties fall from 33% to 26%, soy products from 31% to 24.5%, wheat/maize/barley/sorghum from 12% to 9.5%, and sunflower seed from 7% to 5.5%; regional-economy commodities including sugar, cotton, and rice receive a permanent zero-duty rate. The measures are designed to accelerate foreign exchange liquidation by improving exporter margins under the Milei administration's macroeconomic stabilisation program, and represent the most market-significant single Argentine agricultural trade action of 2025-Q1.