Erdogan says Turkey will boycott US electronics, lira steadies

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country will boycott electronic products made in the USA amid an escalating diplomatic feud with the Trump administration that has helped trigger a currency meltdown in Turkey.

Erdogan also said Turkey was boycotting U.S. electronic products.

This follows tariffs emplaced on Turkish metal exports last week by President Donald Trump which has caused a freefall of the Turkish Lira. It rebounded on Tuesday as Turks sold dollars.

“We will boycott USA electronic products”, Erdogan said.

“You act on one side as a strategic partner but on the other you fire bullets into the foot of your strategic partner”, Erdogan further said, addressing Trump.

In retaliation for these sanctions and tariffs, Erdogan announced on Monday that his country would be boycotting USA electronics. What a boycott on iPhones (and potentially other Apple products) would mean for these locations isn’t clear. In much the same as in 2008, a crisis at a small US investment bank managed to destabilize the rest of the global economy, one would think that a Turkish debt default has the real potential to derail the USA economic recovery. The country’s local currency, the lira, has since plummeted in value. It rose 5.1 per cent to 6.5530 per dollar by 1:31 p.m.in Istanbul.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield US10YT=RR stood around 2.89 percent, having bounced from a three-week low of 2.848 percent set on Monday.

President Erdogan said Turkey was taking measures to stabilise the economy, and should not “give in to the enemy” by investing in foreign currencies.

Önder wants the Turkish government to take the current financial crisis more seriously.

The dispute has centered around the detainment of Pastor Brunson, who is on trial for espionage and terror related charges.

Andrew Brunson’s lawyer lodged an official appeal against his detention today, hours after a meeting between Ankara’s ambassador to Washington and John Bolton, America’s national security adviser, the first high-level contact since negotiations broke down a week ago. He took the opportunity to namecheck Vestel Venus phones as a Turkish alternative to Apple’s handset.

It’s unclear what the USA trying to achieve by targeting an ally with whom it worked together in places including Somalia, Afghanistan and Kosovo. BBVA is the second-largest private bank in Spain.

Erdogan’s opposition to high interest rates, which he has described as “the mother and father of all evils”, is well documented and the Central Bank’s reluctance to raise the cost of borrowing has led to its independence being questioned.

“Something has to be done about interest rates”, Ali Fuat Erbil, Turkiye Garanti’s chief executive officer, said in an interview aired by NTV. “Besides fiscal discipline, monetary tightening is the remedy”. Is there need for that?

President Donald Trump and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly met on the sidelines of July’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit to cut a deal on prisoner releases – which would later become an economic disaster for the lira, and potentially the world.

“In the end, it doesn’t make economic sense for him, it doesn’t make political sense for him, to deny his people the best products that they’re used to”, Rao said.