World Trade

As an increasing number of countries is getting a grip on the COVID-19 outbreak, economies around the world are starting up again. Ahead of the pack is China, which was hit hard, but was hit first. Chinese production facilities are returning to their pre-COVID capacity and the backlog of shipments waiting to leave the country is slowly declining.

Two weeks ago the Turkish government announced that import taxes were increased on products ranging from chemicals to machinery. It was a response to the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The government is trying to protect the country’s industrial producers.

Many countries respond in a different way when it comes to the covid19 pandemic. Within the European Union, we see a focus on keeping trade lanes open and goods flowing, especially medical supplies. Turkey is taking a different route.

The whole world is affected by the coronavirus pandemic. This means that the demand for medical supplies has been higher than ever before. At the same time, global supply chains are being hampered by restrictions in air freight and ocean freight capacity due to grounded planes and blanked sailings.

With the exception of just a few countries, the whole world is in lockdown mode or slowly coming out of that. While production in other regions is still down or slowed by the lockdowns, China is getting slowly back to speed again.