IKV Chairperson Ayhan Zeytinoğlu, evaluated the increase in additional customs duties imposed by the US on our country and stated the following:

"As you know, President Trump has been continuously changing customs tariff rates for certain countries on a reciprocity basis since 2 April 2025, with the aim of further reducing the US's growing annual trade deficits. According to the latest decree signed last week, the expected tariff rates for countries ranged between 10% and 41%, and these officially came into effect as of 7 August 2025. The additional customs duty to be applied to our country was also approved by increasing it from 10% to 15%. As a result of the agreement between the EU and the US, it was also decided to apply a 15% tariff on EU-origin products. Although this agreement, secured by President of the European Comission, von der Leyen, has not yet been ratified by the Member States, President Trump stated that the agreement is valid. The EU's commitments to invest in the US and to purchase energy products and munitions from the US will also lead to the strengthening of EU-US trade and investment relations. This situation may create some disadvantages for Türkiye.

We know that the US market continues to be a strategic target for our companies. Currently, the US is our second-largest export market after Germany. In 2024, we exported goods worth 16.35 billion dollars to the US and imported goods worth 16.22 billion dollars. In 2024, chemicals and chemical products were the sector with the highest exports to the US, amounting to 1.5 billion dollars. This was followed by the automotive industry with 1.2 billion dollars, ready-made clothing and apparel with 856 million dollars, carpets with 784.3 million dollars, and the electrical and electronics sectors with 774.1 million dollars. During Trump's first term, the goal was to advance the economic relations between the US and our country and to increase the trade volume to 100 billion dollars. However, due to the additional customs duties, it is not possible to achieve this targeted trade volume. In fact, we may even see a decrease in our market share in the US. Therefore, we believe that the additional costs to be incurred by our exporters due to the additional US customs duties should be supported by the state in various ways.

On the other hand, we now see from recent developments in the industry that we urgently need to take some measures. In a period where global competition is intensifying, we in the business world had demands regarding exchange rates to ensure that our exports, production, and employment continue to increase. We understand that suppressing the exchange rate is acceptable in the fight against inflation, and we respect this effort. However, this is not sustainable. The fixed exchange rate policy has had negative effects on exports and production, and we have started to lose our export markets. It is not very easy to regain these markets. Moreover, since the exchange rate facilitates imports, there have been monthly increases in the import of consumer goods. For example, in July, there was a 17.2% increase in the import of consumer goods. While we expect increases in items related to production and investment, we believe that more caution should be exercised regarding the import of consumer goods in efforts to reduce the foreign trade deficit. In this context, we can say that it is important to urgently take the necessary measures against China, from which we made the highest amount of imports this month, amounting to 4.6 billion dollars. Like other countries, we can also impose an additional 30% customs duty on China.

Furthermore, despite the high customs tariffs imposed on it, China managed to increase its total exports by 7.2% compared to the same period last year, even though its shipments to the US in July decreased by 22% compared to the same period last year. We know that China's resilience in external sales despite the high tariffs imposed by the US and the support it provides to its exporters played a role in this success. Chinese exporters convert their export revenues at high exchange rates ranging from 12% to 30%. This support is applied at a rate of only 2% in our country. We consistently advocate that this support should be increased to between 5% and 10% in our country as well."