Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has put his weight behind calls for a reduction of the trade tariffs affecting his country's steel and aluminium exports to the United States.
US President Donald Trump doubled the tariffs applied to steel and aluminium imported from Turkey in August 2018. At the time, relations between the two countries were poor because of Turkey's detention of US evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson over his alleged connections to proscribed political organizations.Turkey immediately appealed against the tariff increase to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which accepted Turkey's request in December 2018.Brunson was released on October 12, but the US has not yet removed the additional tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium, despite widespread market expectations that the duties would be cut back at least.So Turkey is still subject to 50% duty on steel exports to the US and 20% duty on aluminium products. Other countries, meanwhile, are subject to 25% duty on steel and 10% on aluminium, tariffs that were introduced after the US finished its...