Trade Minister Ömer Bolat on Wednesday stated Türkiye is looking for the preservation of the rules-based multilateral buying and selling system and expressed concern over growing international protectionism.
Bolat’s remarks got here on the sidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ministerial council assembly, a day after the Paris-based physique revised downward its international outlook, warning that U.S. tariffs are weighing on the economic system.
He warned of rising challenges going through the worldwide financial order, together with dangerous subsidies, bilateral commerce offers undermining multilateralism, and the stagnation of world financial progress and funding.
These traits, he argued, are eroding the foundations of free commerce and weakening buying energy throughout many areas.
On Tuesday, the OECD stated international financial progress is slowing greater than anticipated, just a few months in the past, because the fallout from the Trump administration’s commerce battle takes a much bigger toll on the U.S. economic system.
The international economic system is on target to gradual from 3.3% final 12 months to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026, it stated in its newest Economic Outlook, trimming its estimates from March for progress of three.1% this 12 months and three.0% subsequent 12 months.
But the expansion outlook would probably be even weaker if protectionism will increase, additional fuelling inflation, disrupting provide chains and rattling monetary markets, it added.
This 12 months’s OECD assembly centered on the challenges confronted by the worldwide financial system and the dangers to multilateral worldwide commerce, Bolat instructed Anadolu Agency (AA).
“The main topic of the meeting was the reversal of the free trade in the multilateral system due to countries’ policies harming other countries either through subsidies or via practices shifting from multilateral systems to bilateral agreements,” he stated.
This, in response to Bolat, has fueled issues over the decline of worldwide direct investments, the slowdown of financial progress, the reducing tempo of world commerce growth, and the growing worries about financial prosperity and folks’s buying energy worldwide.
In his speech on the assembly, the minister careworn the efforts of some international locations to achieve an edge in international commerce by way of subsidies must be prevented, recommending boosting mutual interactions and cooperation between the OECD and the World Trade Organization (WTO), in addition to facilitating developed and growing international locations’ entry to the worldwide monetary system.
“Many member country representatives already agreed to these recommendations, but what’s missing here is that many countries insist on implementing the wrong things,” he stated.
The minister acknowledged that this 12 months’s assembly ought to “serve as a wake-up call for the majority of the member countries amid worrying developments.”
“With the rise of protectionism and trade wars, this year’s meetings will serve as an opportunity for the global economy and world trade to rise again with transparent practices and multilateral, joint decisions,” he added.
Türkiye-EU constructive agenda
On the sidelines of the assembly in Paris, Bolat met EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic for talks on bilateral commerce and cooperation, in response to a press release by the Trade Ministry.
Bolat and Sefcovic addressed current developments in international commerce and the probabilities for additional cooperation between Türkiye and the EU inside the scope of the customs union within the face of those developments, the problems on the agenda of bilateral commerce, and the expectations and calls for of our business world, together with the difficulties skilled within the EU Schengen visa processes.
The sides agreed to carry the second assembly of the High-Level Trade Dialogue mechanism between Türkiye and the EU on July 1 in Ankara with the participation of the business world and civil society organizations to deal with all points associated to bilateral relations intimately and to debate concrete cooperation and resolution proposals, the assertion learn.
The agenda objects of the “Trade Dialogue” mechanism, which has been institutionalized on the ministerial stage between the EU and Türkiye, have been additionally mentioned.
During the assembly, the significance of coordinated motion of the EU and Turkish economies within the face of the surroundings of change and uncertainty within the international economic system and commerce, growing protectionist tendencies and the dedication to enhance bilateral integration have been additionally emphasised.
In addition, it was mutually confirmed that vital progress has been made in overcoming mutual boundaries in commerce with the EU within the final two years and that many constructive steps have been taken in the direction of the replace of the customs union.
According to the assertion, joint efforts will proceed with the EU to extend the dialogue within the subject of commerce and economic system, which has strengthened consistent with the frequent targets set out within the assembly between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Ankara in December final 12 months.
It stated that the bilateral commerce rose by 55% within the final 5 years and reached a quantity of $220 billion by the top of 2024, with the EU’s share in Türkiye’s exports leaping to 43.5% within the first 5 months of this 12 months.
Source: www.dailysabah.com