For more than a decade, Rudi Hendri sold locally made clothes from a stall inside Jakarta’s labyrinthine Tanah Abang market. Then three years ago, a businessman from China and his translator showed up with a proposition and changed everything.
They brought samples of sportswear, made in Chinese factories, that were well made and cheaper than the Indonesian-made wares Mr. Rudi had always sold. Mr. Rudi, 55, felt he couldn’t say no. Now he runs three stalls and has a partnership with multiple Chinese factories.
“If the product quality is good and the price is right for me, I’ll take that,” Mr. Rudi said last week at Tanah Abang. Nearby, his workers sifted through a mountain of Chinese-made clothes.
When President Trump complains that trade with China is killing jobs, it resonates in Indonesia. But it is Indonesian jobs that cannot compete: The country has been dealing with China’s outsize influence on every aspect of its economy for more than a decade.
“The worst-case scenario is not that we can’t export,” said Redma Gita Wirawasta, the chairman of the Indonesian Fiber and Filament Yarn Producers Association, referring to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Indonesian goods. “The worst-case scenario is that more and more Chinese goods will come to Indonesia.”
