ISTANBUL — Turkey said on Monday it had terminated retaliatory tariffs imposed in 2018 on US imports ranging from passenger cars to fruit, in a sign of warming bilateral ties as President Tayyip Erdogan travels to the United States.
Erdogan is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week ahead of a meeting at the White House on Thursday with US President Donald Trump, who said he expected trade and military deals to be sealed during the visit.
The cancellation of the tariffs, which, when they were introduced, had covered products including passenger cars, fruit, rice, tobacco, alcoholic beverages, solid fuels and chemical products, was announced in Turkey’s Official Gazette.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, Trump has employed sweeping tariffs in a bid to reshape global trade in Washington’s favor, targeting not only traditional rivals but also long-standing allies.
The United States set the tariff rate on Turkish imports at 15 percent in August. Ankara has not retaliated against the move.
Monday’s cancellations apply to levies imposed in 2018 in response to US tariffs on steel and aluminum imports enacted during Trump’s first term in office.
Erdogan last visited Trump at the White House in 2019, and the pair have had a checkered past.
While they shared a close personal bond during Trump’s first term, it was also a period of strained bilateral relations due to disputes over Washington’s ties with Kurdish fighters in Syria and Ankara’s dealings with Moscow.
Turkey angered the Trump administration in 2019 by purchasing Russian S-400 missile defence systems. In response, Washington cancelled a planned sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and ousted it from a joint production programme for the planes.
Turkey’s trade ministry said the tariffs imposed in 2018 were subsequently updated based on the actions taken by the parties, but they remained in effect to a certain extent, without providing figures on the current scale of the levies.
