Trade between Türkiye and the United States is on course to exceed $42-43 billion this year, Trade Minister Ömer Bolat said in Istanbul on Friday, setting out a longer-term goal of $100 billion.
Bolat was speaking on the second day of the GO! GLOBAL Türkiye Summit, held at a hotel in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district and organised with the digital working group of the Türkiye-US Business Council of DEİK, the Foreign Economic Relations Board, and the entrepreneur network Endeavor Türkiye, the state news agency Anadolu reported.
From $38.5 billion towards $100 billion
According to the minister, bilateral trade reached $38.5 billion in 2025, a rise of 13% on the previous year. He said the figure should climb above $42-43 billion in 2026, that $50 billion was achievable by 2028 and that the two countries’ long-term target was $100 billion.
Bolat said economic ties now went well beyond goods trade, citing liquefied natural gas imports, defence industry cooperation and aircraft and engine purchases from Boeing and General Electric. He put US direct investment in Türkiye at $16.5 billion, and Turkish direct investment in the US at $14.5 billion.
The comments come in a week of intense diplomacy in Istanbul and Ankara, including talks with Canada, and as Turkish exporters look for growth outside Europe, their largest market. Türkiye posted record exports of $26 billion in September, while the EU’s planned Industrial Accelerator Act has raised concern among Turkish car-parts makers.
Pitch to foreign investors
Much of the speech was aimed at the more than 50 international fund investors and managers the ministry said were attending, alongside over 100 start-ups seeking funding. Bolat said Türkiye had attracted $294 billion in foreign direct investment over the past 23 years and was home to about 90,000 companies with foreign capital. Over the same period, he said, the economy grew by an average of 5.35% a year and gross domestic product rose from $238 billion to $1.7 trillion.
He described Türkiye’s start-up ecosystem as worth more than €40 billion, with over 1,000 venture-backed companies and seven unicorns based in Istanbul, and said Turkish fintech firms raised a record $201 million in 2025. Total trade in goods and services, he added, amounts to about $850 billion, or roughly half of GDP.
The figures are the minister’s own and were not broken down further. Foreign-owned companies are a growing presence in the country: the Union of Chambers (TOBB) recorded 799 new foreign-capital companies in September alone. Foreigners considering a move for business can find practical steps in our moving to Türkiye checklist.
Sources
Photo: ampersandyslexia / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
