Erdogan Makes Some Worrying Friends

Source:Bloomberg Date:14Aug2018

It’s hard to see how Erdogan can squeeze much more from Moscow trade, given Russia’s own economic constraints. He has spoken of using national currencies rather than the dollar in Turkey’s trade with Russia and other countries, an idea Russia endorses. But how is that realistic? Russia’s Soviet predecessor had to use barter, counter-trade and various bilateral clearing agreements to get around the fact that the ruble wasn’t freely convertible, mostly trading within the Communist bloc that way. A national-currency based trade doesn’t sound a long way off from the old Comecon world.