Our Goal Is to Carry Our Country to The Hıghest Level In The Value Chaın

The pandemic, measures, quarantine, radical change in the supply chain, economic problems, increasing distances, new habits… These words and concepts that we came across almost every day in the last two years point to the inevitable changes in almost every field, from economy to social life, to which humanity is subjected.

Despite all these difficulties, we have steered our activities through our 11 bilateral and 1 regional business councils in the Americas, knowing how important the continent is for Turkish, exporters. We created our regional strategy in full coordination with all our institutions operating in the relevant countries, especially our Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and our founding institutions. In line with the goal of developing economic relations, we have boosted the level of cooperation through the platforms that our business councils provided.
Following 2020, a rather stagnant year due to the pandemic, we witnessed a rapid recovery in international trade with the acceleration of Covid-19 vaccinations in 2021. At the point reached today, we are very happy to state that, according to the data of our Ministry of Trade, our exports to almost all of the countries in the Americas have increased significantly compared to the previous year. Our trade with the US, our biggest trade partner in the continent, has reached levels that excite the business circles of both parties in 2021. As of the end of 2021, our exports to the US increased by 45% compared to the previous year and reached $14.7 billion. On the other hand, our imports from the US increased by 14% compared to the previous year and amounted to $13.2 billion. We are justifiably happy to have a foreign trade surplus for the first time in our history to the US, the world’s largest economy.

Looking at our exports to our other major trade partners in the continent, besides the US, we see that our exports to Canada have increased by 68% to $1.6 billion, our exports to Brazil increased by 77% to $1 billion, and our exports to Mexico have increased by 55% to $800 million.

As in other regions, I believe that we have left behind a tiring but instructive process for our business councils in the Americas region. Even though there has been a significant decrease in the number of visits and meetings in-person due to travel restrictions, we have largely closed this gap via online meetings and conferences. We held a total of 187 events between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021, with 11 bilateral and 1 regional Business Councils under American Business Councils.

We held meetings with special agenda topics such as “Türkiye-Venezuela Interconnected Business Series”, “Business and Investment Opportunities for Turkish Companies in Aguascalientes, Mexico”, “TAİK Transatlantic Talks: Green Economic Development Webinar”, “Türkiye-Canada: Geothermal and Renewable Energy Webinar”, and “Business and Investment Opportunities in El Salvador”, where Turkish and foreign business people and corporate officials came together.

We organized the 38th American-Turkish Conference (ATC) that is traditionalized by our Türkiye -US Business Council (TAİK), where the Turkish-American strategic and economic relations are shaped, online for the first time on September 21-24, 2020, due to the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, we held our last event in-person titled “Florida-Türkiye Business Connection: A New Networking Lunch” in Miami on February 4, 2020. At the event, where we hosted Hamdi Ulukaya, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Chobani, the largest yoghurt brand in the US, we brought together more than a hundred Turkish and American businesspeople.

As a result of the rapid spread of Covid-19 all over the world, we quickly directed our activities towards the digital environment and started the “TAİK Transatlantic Talks” series. We appealed to thousands of business people by hosting outstanding people in the field, from New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Thomas Friedman to US Senator Lindsey Graham.

We held our first event in person in Florida on May 24, 2021. We are glad to have brought together more than a hundred businesspeople at our Florida Networking Dinner event, where we also hosted our Consul General in Miami.

On the other hand, this year we held the 11th Türkiye Investment Conference Gala Dinner in New York on September 20, 2021, with the presence of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Türkiye , Mehmet Muş, Minister of Trade, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hulusi Akar, Minister of National Defense, and Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Minister of Culture and Tourism. At this event, we hosted nearly 300 guests, including the leading representative of the Turkish business world, the world’s leading investment companies, and senior executives from the US.

We supported our activities with the reports we prepared during this process. We held meetings with public and private sector stakeholders under the coordination of the Türkiye-US Business Council (TAİK) within the scope of the $100 billion trade target determined between Türkiye and the US. We prepared a report titled “Boosting Bilateral Trade Between Türkiye&US” in August 2019 with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the world’s leading consulting companies. In this report, we identified the steps to be taken on the way to the target of bilateral trade of $100 billion. Then, we prepared another study titled “Re-thinking Türkiye-US Economic Relations in the Covid-19 context” in October 2020 to explain the opportunities brought along by the transformations in supply chains following the Covid-19 pandemic in Türkiye-US trade. We have personally forwarded this study to the President of the US, US Secretary of Commerce, US Trade Representative, and other relevant Secretaries.
In brief, as the representative of the Turkish private sector, we maintained our strategic communication activities without interruption, which will better explain the role Türkiye and our business world play in the value chains in the target countries. As Türkiye-Americas Business Councils, our target for the next period will be to bring our country to the highest levels in the value chain as well as in the supply chain.