Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world. Would a free trade agreement (FTA) with the country be beneficial both economically and politically to the United States? What kind of benefit could Indonesia expect? This book presents a case for improved trade relations between Indonesia and the United States and recommends advancing exploratory talks toward a US-Indonesia FTA. The authors present a detailed study of the stakes involved in the various areas of the proposed negotiation and estimate the FTA's potential for trade creation, trade diversion, and welfare under different scenarios.

"This paper examines the main issues in designing an FTA between Indonesia and the United States. The first section briefly examines current trade relations and issues between Indonesia and the United States. It also addresses the strategic and economic impact of a possible FTA between Indonesia and the United States for Indonesia. The second section examines elements of a possible Indonesia-United States FTA with a view on similar agreements concluded between Singapore and the United States and between Thailand and Australia. The third and concluding section discusses the kind of preparations needed on the Indonesia side to successfully negotiate a FTA with the United States."--CSIS Web site.

This publication displays the menu for choice of available methods to evaluate the impact of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). It caters mainly to policy makers from developing countries and aims to equip them with some economic knowledge and techniques that will enable them to conduct their own economic evaluation studies on existing or future FTAs, or to critically re-examine the results of impact assessment studies conducted by others, at the very least.