Turkey to boycott U.S. products including iPhone, says Erdogan

The moves will free up 10 billion lira, $6 billion, and $3 billion equivalent of gold liquidity in the financial system, the bank said.

That’s helping to push the USA dollar higher, which hurts big U.S. exporters.

Erdogan said Turkey was facing an “economic attack” and a “bigger, deeper operation” but showed no sign of making concessions to the United States. A decade of easy money and low interest rates in the United States and European Union following the 2008 financial crisis led to investors searching for higher yields to emerging markets like Turkey. So far, they have been handsomely rewarded, with the currency down almost 30 per cent over the last month and the stock market down 4.9 per cent since August 9.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said Turkey would boycott USA electronic goods in retaliation for punitive sanctions by Washington against Ankara over the detention of an American pastor. However, other countries – such as Mexico and South Africa – also took advantage of low U.S. interest rates in the years after the financial crisis to borrow heavily in dollars and saw their currencies coming under pressure.

It was supported by news of a planned conference call in which the finance minister will seek to reassure investors concerned by Erdogan’s control of the economy and his resistance to interest rate hikes to tackle double-digit inflation.

Investors also backed away from Argentina’s stock market.

Mr Erdogan also renewed a call for Turks to convert their dollars into the Turkish lira, to help strengthen the country’s currency which has lost 40% in value this year. If anything, the drop in the lira is making us a lot more money right now, so we’re not anxious about it at all!”.

“The US is a relative beacon of strength with stable to improving economy”. Toronto-Dominion Bank, Manulife Financial Corp and Royal Bank of Canada added between 0.3 per cent to 1.5 per cent and led the financial index higher. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 19.56 points, or 0.69 percent, to 2,841.49 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 57.31 points, or 0.73 percent, to 7,877.02. Technology companies held up better.

How much has Turkey’s currency dropped?

The latest blow came on Friday, when US President Donald Trump said he had approved the doubling of tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium.

The lira has fallen 42 percent so far this year, with most of the losses happening in the last few weeks.

A Turkish business now effectively owes twice as much as it did at the beginning of the year.

“We’re working to set up a call between the president and the president of Turkey to reaffirm our strong bond”, she says.

“It took place on the margins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit”, the source said. Monsanto said government agencies and hundreds of studies have concluded Roundup is safe.

“We (also) have our Venus and Vestel”, he said about homegrown Turkish electronics brands.

Trump has been criticising the company since June, when it said it would move more manufacturing out of the USA to avoid European tariffs.

“We will produce every product we are importing from overseas with foreign currency here and we will be the ones exporting these products”.

USA crude oil fell 0.6 per cent to US$67.20 a barrel in NY.