Israel manufacture Braces For economical harm Amid Turkish Trade Ban

Via mediate East Eye

Sectors across the Israel economy are informing of wide-reaching impacts of Turkey’s decision to halt all trade with Israel, and are scrambling to find alternate sources for lost imports.

The Turkish trade minister announced earlier this week that Ankara is halting all import and export transactions related to Israel until it “allows an unique and successful flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.” The ban on imports includes Iron and steel products, construction materials, minerals, machinery, cars, energy products, rubber, plastics, wellness and agricultural products.

The construction manufacture is sibling for the destiny of Turkish iron and steel products and building materials, as Turkey supported 29 percent of Israel’s full cement imports last year.

Construction work on the settlement of Tsofim, east of the Palestinian West Bank village of Qalqilya, on 2 January 2024 (AFP)

Last month, Israel businessmen warned that the restrictions could drive an increase in property and rent prices. Meanwhile, Israel’s largest oil refinery, Bezan, said the ban could impact Crude oil imports.

Forty percent of Israel’s yearly oil consumption is piped to the Turkish oil hub port of Ceyhan and then shipped to Israel.

Moreover, representatives of the electronic products manufacture are informing that the ban could lead to a 35 percent hike in prices, as the majority of home electronic goods in Israel are manufactured in Turkey.

The fresh restrictions could force importers to import across the Red Sea, where attacks by Yemen’s Houthi group have driven a spice in shipping costs.

‘Dire straits’

In April, the contractors’ association gate a letter to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, accepting them of driving the sector to the brink of collapse.

Amit Gottlieb, president of the Urban Renewal Committee in the Israel Builders’ Association (ACB), said the Israel construction manufacture was already in “dire straits” since Israel’s war on Gaza began, due it lab shortages results from Israel’s ban on Palestinian workers.

He added that alternate imports of construction materials from Germany, large Britain, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece needed to be arrayed "as shortly as possible".

Turkey’s exports to Israel were worth $5.4bn in 2023, or 2.1 percent of its full exports, according to authoritative data. From 2009 to 2023, trade between the 2 countries close tripled. By the end of that period, Turkey had become the fifth-largest supplier of goods imported by Israel, while Israel ranked as Turkey’s 10th-largest export market, based on data from the Central Bureau of Statistics.

On Thursday, Israel’s abroad minister, Israel Katz, admitted Turkey’s president Reception Tayyip Erdogan of ignoring global trade agreements and acting like a ‘dictator’. He added that Israel would see to replace the lost Turkish imports with locally produced goods or imports from another countries.