as reported on Ice, Minister of Finance Betzalel Smotritch has decided to punish Turkey/Erdogan for his continued support of Hamas and the declining, or deteriorating, relationship with Israel. To that end Smotritch has announced that import taxes on goods imported form Turkey will be increased to the rate of 100% taxes. This will be brought to the government for approval.
Obviously the idea of this is to hurt Turkey. They cant work against Israel and then expect us to just go about our regular business with them and import their goods helping their economy. With such high taxes it will not be profitable for importers to import from Turkey and will look for alternative sources to import from.
Smotritch is conditioning this on Erdogan's rule saying this emergency order will be nullified at the end of Erdogan's reign as President of Turkiye. I would assume if whoever follows Erdogan as President of Turkiye is just as anti-Israel the orders will be renewed (possibly), but we would like to believe the problem there is Erdogan and anyone who comes after him will be better and more favorable to Israel than Erdogan is.
From a political perspective I think this is a great idea and maybe even long overdue.
That being said, raising taxes, cutting out a major source of imported goods, is likely going to cause prices to rise. While we can easily say that is the price to pay for Zionism, for not supporting our enemies, for not supporting those who wish to harm us, Israel has always already been a pretty expensive place to live and in the past year it has gotten significantly worse and more expensive. This move is likely going to make it even more expensive. Maybe at the same time taxes are increased for Turkish goods, taxes should also be cut for goods form alternative sources.
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