By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives August 15, 2018
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would boycott U.S. electronic goods, the latest move in escalating jousting between Ankara and Washington that has sent the Turkish lira to record lows. The boycott, which Mr. Erdogan announced in a speech celebrating the 17th anniversary of his ruling party, is part of a wider campaign Turkey has launched to retaliate against U.S. sanctions, and which has spread to places from the advertising market to beauty parlors.
“We are going to enforce a boycott on U.S. electronic goods,” Mr. Erdogan said. “If they have iPhones, there is also Samsung,” he said, referring to the South Korean cellphone maker. Turkey and the U.S. are locked in a bitter dispute over the fate of an American pastor. The White House has vowed to pile pressure on Turkey until the Presbyterian minister, Andrew Brunson, who faces terrorism charges and as much as 35 years in prison, had been allowed to return home. Turkish authorities say justice must run its course and have slammed tariffs that the U.S. introduced this week on some Turkish imports as an “act of economic war.”Well. That’s because it is an economic war. And it’s working. The lira is down 40 percent and confidence in the currency has never been lower. Ironically, there’s an interesting idea out there for how Erdogan could more smartly counter Trump’s maneuvers. That is to give up his own personal control of the Turkish currency and peg it instead to a more stable world currency like, say, the U.S. dollar? It’s not an unheard-of idea and it would be easy for Erdogan to do it.
Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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