Read on Twitter
Just weeks after announcing and then lifting sanctions and tariffs Trump says that trade with Turkey (now total of roughly $20bn annually) "should be easily $100 billion" and that will be done part of "trade deal."
Two points... https://twitter.com/MikeShepard4/status/1194681936243023872
Two points... https://twitter.com/MikeShepard4/status/1194681936243023872
1. Trump seems to be talking about deal to sell more to Turkey and vice versa rather than a broader bilateral trade pact that would address barriers to commerce. The Trump admin has not notified Congress that it plans to open negotiations for such a deal as it would have to.
2. It's hard to see how the math works. Turkey's total annual imports are worth a little over $200 billion. And its exports are worth less than that. https://oec.world/en/profile/country/tur/
Turkey's top trading partners are now mostly EU members. With good reason. Turkey & EU are in a customs union. That's a competitive advantage that would be hard for US to overcome.
(Highly recommend MIT's Observatory of Economic Complexity, by the way: https://oec.world/en/ )
(Highly recommend MIT's Observatory of Economic Complexity, by the way: https://oec.world/en/ )
The US exported $10 billion to Turkey in 2018. To get to $50 billion in exports it would have to export as much to Turkey as Germany and China combined. No problem setting the bar high. But even that seems unlikely.
