BANGKOK (AP) — Resource-rich Indonesia is expanding its production of aluminum as the Iran war disrupts supplies, relying on its abundant coal reserves to power new smelters that run contrary to efforts to curb carbon emissions that cause climate change.
Prices have risen due to fuel shortfalls and attacks on infrastructure that have slowed production in the Middle East of the lightweight, silverish metal used in everything from kitchen foil and power lines to smartphones and cars.
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Tug boats pull barges loaded with coal on Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A barge is fully loaded with coal on the Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A truck operates at a coal mine near Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A tug boat pulls a barge loaded with coal on the Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A tug boat pulls a barge loaded with coal on Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
In working to raise its limited manufacturing capacity, Indonesia has a strong ally in China, which makes 60% of the world's aluminum but is keen to reduce pollution and emissions from smelters on its own shores. Chinese companies have invested in about three-quarters of the planned Indonesian projects.
Here's what to know about Indonesia's ambitious aluminum plans:
The Middle East usually makes about 9% of the world’s aluminum, but output from the region is expected to drop 44% this year from 2025, according to Fastmarkets, a commodities information agency.
Energy shortfalls drove Emirates Global Aluminium to back out of deals and Qatar Aluminium Ltd. to slash production, while Iranian strikes damaged Aluminium Bahrain's facilities.
A metric ton of aluminum traded for between $3,150 and $3,250 before the Iran war. But the conflict drove up that price to as high as $3,780 per metric ton in June. It’s now trading near $3,400 a metric ton.
The war has magnified the potential for other regions, like Southeast Asia, to replace Middle East production, said Andy Farida of Fastmarkets.
“When that supply is so unsure, end users look for alternatives,” he said. “The war has really accelerated this transformation and put Indonesia on the map.”
Aluminum is one of the most used metals in the world and its production is highly energy intensive. The process starts with the mining of bauxite ore, which is refined into alumina and then smelted into aluminum.
By the end of the decade, Indonesia wants to quadruple its alumina output to 32.5 million metric tons and ramp up aluminum production from around 1 million metric tons in 2025 to 14.5 million metric tons by 2030, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
The Finland-registered nonprofit is tracking 32 prospective off-grid coal plants, built by private companies to exclusively power aluminum smelters. These are known as “captive coal” facilities.
There is limited public data on the emissions from these types of plants, according to Syahdiva Moezbar, with CREA in Jakarta. “This captive coal boom all over Indonesia is essentially not tracked. That is why it’s very concerning,” he said.
Such plans are contrary to Indonesia’s promises to cut its use of coal, the most heavily polluting major fossil fuel and a significant source of planet-warming emissions.
They also threaten to cause more damage at a time when the expansion of Indonesia's globally important nickel industry is sacrificing local environments for industrialization.
The aluminum industry accounts for about 2% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, equaling about 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year, according to the World Economic Forum. That’s more than the total annual emissions of most countries.
If all Indonesia’s planned projects begin operating by 2030, CREA estimates that the country's own bauxite reserves will be depleted in less than 12 years.
China has invested between $5.5 billion and $6 billion in Indonesia's aluminum industry, according to CREA, which forecasts this to surge to $30 billion by 2030.
After Beijing set a domestic cap on aluminum production to curb overcapacity in 2017, Chinese companies expanded into other countries that have fewer restrictions, like Indonesia, according to Putra Adhiguna, with the Jakarta-based Energy Shift Institute.
Indonesia categorizes nickel and aluminum as “transition minerals” since they can be used in so-called clean technologies, such as electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.
That's left a loophole for companies to maintain that these nickel and aluminum investments, which are fueled by coal, are in keeping with climate change commitments, despite the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to stop funding overseas coal plants in 2021.
It is unclear what final products Indonesia-origin metals, like aluminum and nickel, will end up in, said Binbin Mariana with the environmental advocacy group Market Forces.
“It is a huge loophole, an elephant can go through the loophole,” she said. “You say it’s a green product, but it is powered by coal... That’s definitely greenwashing.”
Aluminum smelters could run on cleaner energy like hydropower, but this would take longer and cost more.
Indonesia is prioritizing speed to capitalize on the window of opportunity that the Iran war has created, said Adhiguna, with the Energy Shift Institute. “The speed factor is really what is causing the havoc,” he said.
“This is really running against the grain, against the spirit, of the commitment to the climate movement," he said.
Building more captive coal for aluminum will worsen the toxic haze that often blankets Southeast Asian cities, like Jakarta, according to Muhammad Al Amin, with the Indonesian Forum for Environment.
The environmental advocacy nonprofit, also known as WALHI, has campaigned against increasing the use of coal on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which is a nickel production hub.
“If companies want to expand captive coal to aluminum, I think it is very bad news and a very bad development,” he said. “We have seen it, we have felt it — how communities suffer from the captive coal impact.”
Associated Press writer Edna Tarigan in Jakarta contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Tug boats pull barges loaded with coal on Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A barge is fully loaded with coal on the Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A truck operates at a coal mine near Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A tug boat pulls a barge loaded with coal on the Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
A tug boat pulls a barge loaded with coal on Mahakam River in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on Aug. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahmad Mulia Panjaitan)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump reacted Wednesday to Republicans' midterm election losses by showing off the White House ballroom he's building as he demonstrated the kind of detached behavior that voters around the country said was a key reason they opted to punish his party.
In an extraordinary scene, Trump summoned reporters to the hulking construction site that he demolished the East Wing to make room for and the Republican president spoke for nearly 20 minutes about minute building details. He did not mention his party losing control of Congress after defeats in some of the country's deepest GOP strongholds, including Texas and South Carolina, or voter concerns about the high cost of living and federal corruption that helped cause the election losses.
“This has been a structure the likes of which has never been seen anywhere,” Trump said, speaking into a microphone that sent loud feedback echoing around the cavernous space.
He talked at length about how the ballroom would be the ”safest place in Washington" upon completion, stretching five stories underground and featuring a cut of marble that he called “a vein that people have been after for 50 years.”
“We have large staircases coming from the kitchen. If I put the kitchen on top, you would lose three walls, because a kitchen takes about 30% of the space,” Trump said of his choice to make the ballroom's kitchen subterranean.
“It’s going to be top of the line," he added.
Presidents usually speak with reporters the day after the midterms. It's normal for those whose party endured big losses to shoulder publicly at least part of the responsibility.
But not Trump.
He began the day with a schedule that showed only private meetings, then suggested he had decided at the last minute to invite the press to watch as the final steel beam — topped with a small evergreen tree symbolizing growth and luck — was hoisted into place on the ballroom roof.
Trump signed the beam with a marker during the ceremony, writing “Love!” followed by his name in supersize letters.
His appearance came after midterm voters said they thought the president was focused on the wrong issues. About two-thirds of voters said Trump does not have the right priorities, according to The AP Voter Poll, and the overwhelming majority of these voters supported Democratic House candidates.
The post-midterm ceremony might also reinforce voter concerns about whether Trump, 80, is up for the rigors of the presidency.
Biden dropped out of his reelection race in 2024 after a disastrous debate with Trump, who even today frequently mocks Biden's mental and physical acuity.
Trump eventually took questions at the ballroom site and attempted to duck responsibility for the broad Republican losses. He insisted he didn't lead the party into an Election Day drubbing despite staging a flurry of rallies where he implored supporters to pretend that he was on the ballot.
"If I were on the ballot I would have won,” Trump insisted.
He said campaign rallies in mostly Republican states or conservative parts of more closely divided ones featured enthusiastic crowds “but we weren’t able to transfer love to the candidates.”
The beam-raising was not his first baffling political moment this week. On Monday, Trump gave his closing message of the midterm cycle in a long speech at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, shining a spotlight at a pivotal time on a project marred by algae, leaks and delays.
“I heard it was a very good speech, got great reviews,” he said on Wednesday.
An Associated Press analysis of the 39 Trump speeches and rallies that Trump staged between Sept. 1 and Election Day showed the president used phrasing suggesting he was on the ballot in 30 of them. In some addresses he returned to the subject more than once, though, meaning there were at least 40 instances where he appealed to voters to engage in that bit of make-believe.
But as the extent of his party's defeat became apparent on election night, Trump was deflecting blame.
“I don’t like to consider it a defeat for me. I wasn’t on the ballot,” he told Fox News Channel. Voters, he said, just “didn’t like the candidates” on the ballot. The Voter Poll suggests Trump himself was a drag on GOP politicians and that in some races, candidates were seen as too supportive of the unpopular president.
Trump has a long history of passing the buck, on issues large and small, especially when there are ballot-box failures.
After Republicans lost the House in the 2018 midterms during Trump's first term, he blamed defeated members of his own party.
Utah Rep. Mia Love, who had tried to distance herself from him, “gave me no love, but then she lost. Too bad," the president said, while also mocking other losing lawmakers for not embracing him — Florida's Carlos Curbelo, Colorado's Mike Coffman, Virginia's Barbara Comstock, and Illinois' Peter Roskam.
That's in contrast to how Democrat Barack Obama described his party's losses in 2010 as “a shellacking" or Republican George W. Bush described Democratic victories in the 2006 midterms as “a thumping.”
But Trump, known for defying all kinds of presidential norms, began laying the groundwork for avoiding blame this cycle well before balloting began.
He told Punchbowl News in August that voters were angry at Republicans “but they’re not angry at me.”
The president posted on his social media site last month that should Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton lose — and he did — "it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove.” That's despite Trump's risky endorsement of scandal-marred Paxton in the primary over incumbent Cornyn, who first got to the Senate in 2002 and was considered the safer bet. Rove is a political strategist who helped Bush win the White House.
Also losing Tuesday was Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a longtime Trump ally.
Trump posted on social media that if Abbott “hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost," suggesting the governor had backed away from his staunchly conservative credentials and become “Republican in Name Only.”
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Associated Press writers Amelia Thomson DeVeaux, Linley Sanders, Josh Boak and Aaron Kessler contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump talks with construction workers at the White House Ballroom at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a tour of White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump signs the final steel beam before it is placed during construction for the White House Ballroom at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a tour of White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a tour of White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a tour of White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a tour of White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump signs a steel beam at the White House Ballroom construction site at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of construction of the White House ballroom, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump speaks during a tour of the White House Ballroom construction at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum listens at right. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks to supporters at an election night event in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/ David J. Phillip)
President Donald Trump talks with Senate candidate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton at a campaign rally at Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP Photo/Annie Rice)
President Donald Trump stands on stage after speaking at a campaign rally at the Salina Regional Airport, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Salina Kan. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
