Economy
US second-top destination for Turkish goods in January to August
The U.S. emerged as the second-top destination for Turkish exports in the first eight months of the year, with shipments surging close to 13% compared to the same period a year earlier, according to a report on Sunday.
Türkiye’s exports to the U.S. increased by 12.9% year-over-year in the January-August period, reaching approximately $9.64 billion (TL 470.11 billion), the report by Anadolu Agency (AA) indicated. The U.S. thus became the second-largest destination for Turkish exports.
The country’s total exports increased by 4% on a yearly basis in the January-August period, rising from $177.9 billion to $185 billion, according to data compiled from Türkiye Exporters Assembly (TIM).
During the same period, Germany ranked first among Türkiye’s top export destinations, with exports totaling $13.58 billion.
When looking at trade with the U.S., exports surged from some $8.54 billion during the same period last year to $9.64 billion this January-August, approaching the $10 billion mark.
In Türkiye’s exports to the United States during the first eight months of the year, the chemicals and chemical products and electrical and electronics sectors stood out, while exports by the steel sector in August increased by a staggering 404.6% versus the same month last year.
According to sectoral export data for the U.S., exports of chemicals and chemical products increased by 33.7% during the January-August period compared with the same period last year, climbing from $780.3 million to slightly over $1 billion.
Automotive exports reached $841.2 million
Exports from the electrical and electronics sector to the U.S. also increased by 41.8% during this period, rising from $702.8 million to $996.4 million.
Meanwhile, the automotive industry was also among the sectors that exported the most to the United States. Its exports increased by 3.5% during the first eight months of the year, reaching $841.2 million.
During the same period, exports of cereals, pulses, oilseeds and related products increased by 4.7% to $596.9 million, while exports of ready-to-wear clothing and apparel rose by 6.5% to $594.8 million.
Similarly, sales of machinery and equipment also posted a yearly increase of about 27.2% to $530.8 million, while carpet exports rose by 5.2% to $486.7 million.
Istanbul’s exports to U.S. up by 9.1%
Looking at exports by province, Istanbul recorded the highest level of exports to the United States during the January-August period, totaling $3.42 billion. Istanbul’s exports to the U.S. increased by 9.1% compared with the same period last year.
Istanbul was followed by the capital, Ankara, with $976.5 million, the western province of Izmir with $819.7 million, Gaziantep in the south with $816.4 million, and the northwestern province of Kocaeli with exports totalling some $700.3 million.
Ankara’s exports to the United States increased by 53.5%, Gaziantep’s by 16.8%, Kocaeli’s by 13.6% and Izmir’s by 11.3%, respectively.
Exports from Bursa also increased by 25.7% during the same period, reaching $566.8 million, while exports from Eskişehir rose by 25.5% to $436.4 million.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were expected to meet on Sunday to try to prepare ground for potential agreements on artificial intelligence, tariffs and critical minerals for a high-stakes Washington summit this week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The meetings at JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in Manhattan, which will also include U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, were due to start at about 10:30 a.m. (2.30 p.m. GMT) and are expected to run all day.
Reuters reported that the Chinese vice premier arrived in New York with visuals also showing him entering the banking giant’s headquarters.
Key topics will be the status of a U.S.-China trade truce that is set to expire on Nov. 10, flows of Chinese rare-earth magnets and critical minerals that U.S. officials say are insufficient, and potential guardrails for artificial intelligence after reports of key security breaches involving AI models.
The most likely outcome, analysts say, would be for Washington and Beijing to agree on small steps to show they are continuing to avoid escalating tensions in a delicate trade relationship that has major consequences for the global economy.
“I think there will be some show of deliverables because of the fact that it’s a presidential summit coming, but I don’t feel like we’re on the verge of some sort of breakthrough,” said Anna Ashton, a longtime China trade analyst and founder of Ashton Intelligence.
“I think the status quo is probably both sides’ general best expectation.”
Many of the issues that He, Bessent and Greer will have to work through for Trump and Xi are holdovers from the two leaders’ meeting in Beijing in May, including an effort on both sides to cut tariffs on non-strategic goods and Chinese pledges to increase purchases of U.S. agricultural goods by $17 billion a year and to purchase more than 200 Boeing aircraft.
The Bessent-He-Greer meeting follows a pattern set over the past 16 months, in which the three officials met in European and Asian cities to tee up potential agreements for Trump and Xi.
These efforts included the November 2025 truce reached in Busan, South Korea, which capped U.S. tariffs imposed during Trump’s second term in office at about 20% on Chinese goods after tit-for-tat escalation had brought them to triple-digit levels on both sides.
The U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the Trump tariffs that were invoked under a national emergencies law, including duties related to fentanyl trafficking.
Trump’s administration has been rebuilding them under new authorities, including restoring a 12.5% tariff on Chinese goods over forced labor allegations. It is finalizing a separate tariff investigation aimed at curbing excess industrial capacity that it says is rampant in China.
Under that truce, China promised to restore the flow of critical minerals to the U.S. and global users. However, a senior U.S. official told reporters on Friday that China’s performance on that front “has not been up to par” and would be a topic for discussion ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.
New talks on AI
The Bessent-He discussions on AI are significant because the U.S. and China are the two major forces driving the development of advanced AI tools and the global adoption of the technology.
Rare earths play a crucial role in the manufacturing of advanced semiconductor technology powering AI.
Bessent said on Friday he expects the discussions to cover “both open- and closed-weight models.” Open-weight models are AI systems with publicly accessible core elements, where users can download and fine-tune them for specific tasks.
Chinese open-weight models are becoming more popular with U.S. companies because they can be cheaper than closed-weight AI tools such as those developed by Anthropic, OpenAI and other U.S. companies.
“The United States remains the leader in AI. And we are open to discussions on avoiding shared risks and avoiding bifurcation of our two systems,” Bessent said in a statement regarding the China talks.
Bessent has called for the U.S. and China to agree on AI “guardrails,” aimed at keeping powerful models out of the hands of malign non-state actors.
Tariff reductions, investment
The U.S. and China also agreed in May to launch discussions to reduce tariffs for non-strategic goods under a so-called “Board of Trade” mechanism along with a similar forum to deal with specific investment issues.
While the Trump administration has tightened restrictions on U.S. companies investing in some industries in China, Reuters reported on Friday that it is working on rules that would likely allow U.S. pharmaceutical firms to invest in promising Chinese drugs and strike licensing deals for them.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday that He would also lead a delegation of Chinese companies to the U.S. that would participate in economic and trade consultations ahead of the summit.
The business delegation, which mirrors a group of U.S. CEOs that Trump brought to Beijing in May, was announced as Trump expressed openness to Chinese automakers building factories in the U.S.
U.S. auto industry groups on Friday urged Trump to maintain an effective ban on Chinese vehicle sales in the U.S. on national security grounds.
Few states may be better positioned to tax billionaires than California. The state is politically left-leaning, faces significant health care funding needs and is home to as many as 250 billionaires whose combined wealth exceeds $2 trillion.
But the Nov. 3 ballot initiative Proposition 40, which asks Californians whether to impose a one-time 5% tax on the state’s billionaires, is far from certain to pass, political analysts say, amid a debate that has raised questions about income inequality and the state’s future business prospects.
Whether and how to tax the ultrawealthy are questions that extend well beyond the Hollywood Hills and Silicon Valley.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and democratic socialist, filmed a video in front of billionaire investor Ken Griffin’s penthouse as part of an ultimately successful campaign to tax high-end second homes in the city. Even a majority of Republicans see billionaires as creating unfairness and contributing to economic woes, one 2025 poll showed.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in August found 64% of independent registered voters in the six-day nationwide poll said they support increasing taxes on corporations and billionaires, compared to 15% who oppose the idea.
“Billionaires are no longer very popular,” said University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, a researcher of wealth inequality who helped write Proposition 40. They have “enormous wealth, enormous power.”
Saez describes the proposal as very simply “a tax on billionaires to fund health care.”
California has more billionaires than any other state, according to a Forbes estimate last year, and is home to some of the country’s most valuable companies, including tech giants Google, Apple, Meta and Nvidia .
Polls show it ahead – for now
A UC Berkeley IGS Poll in August found 48% of likely voters supported Proposition 40, with 41% opposed, while a September Public Policy Institute of California poll showed it leading 52% to 46%.
California ballot measures typically need robust early support to survive Election Day. Undecided voters are more apt to vote “no” when the time comes, political analysts say, and opponents have yet to crank up their advertising campaign.
“California ballot measures tend to lose support over time, and if it’s polling below 50% in August, that’s not a good sign for its prospects,” said John Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Backers say California’s measure would generate $100 billion for health care, food assistance and education. But skeptics peg the revenue estimate at closer to $40 billion and say it could also drive some billionaires out of state, depriving California of future tax revenue and investment.
Opposition has been bolstered by billionaires such as Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder who has spent more than $100 million to defeat Proposition 40 and support countermeasures on the same ballot that would effectively void it.
“I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place,” Brin, 53, whose family left the Soviet Union when he was a child, told the New York Times.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat widely believed to be running for president in 2028, also opposes Proposition 40, instead advocating for a nationwide federal wealth tax.
Colorful initiative history
California ballot initiatives draw unusual attention because the state combines a powerful direct-democracy system with the nation’s largest state economy and population. The process allows citizens to propose laws, though most initiatives are drafted by interest groups or lawyers.
Proposition 13 in 1978, which capped and rolled back property taxes, became a national symbol of a tax revolt that shaped U.S. politics.
But California voters have only approved one in three citizen initiatives historically.
In 2022, another California ballot measure aimed at increasing taxes on top earners, Proposition 30, lost 58% to 42%, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.
“Sixty percent of Californians now reliably vote Democratic for statewide races, but that doesn’t mean that they’re really liberal on taxing, spending, or even many social issues,” said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego.
European countries including France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany repealed wealth taxes between 1997 and 2018 amid concerns about capital flight, avoidance and economic competitiveness. The California proposition is retroactive to Jan. 1, limiting billionaires’ ability to escape the tax by moving.
Saez said the tax was unlikely to prompt many billionaires or the tech startups that are making people wealthy to move, because of the quality of California’s universities, research, infrastructure and talent.
“It’s just absurd to think that Silicon Valley is going to come to a standstill because of a billionaire wealth tax,” he said.
Türkiye has revoked the license of Bank Mellat, one of Iran’s largest private banks, according to the decision published in the country’s Official Gazette early on Saturday.
The move follows a decision by Türkiye’s banking regulator over the Tehran-based bank, which provides financial support to Iran’s government and is subject to U.S., EU and U.K. sanctions, according to OpenSanctions, an open-source database of information on sanctions-hit entities.
The Iranian government is also the largest shareholder of the bank, it said.
In revoking Bank Mellat’s license, the Turkish regulator cited article 71b of the banking law, which says the entity’s “continued operation poses a threat to the rights of depositors and participation fund holders and to the security and stability of the financial system.”
The move comes two weeks after Washington imposed sanctions on a smaller Türkiye-based bank over alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
A recent data breach at Australian graphic design platform Canva has affected information linked to 424 organizations or institutions in Türkiye, according to the country’s data protection authority.
According to Canva’s notification, the breach occurred after unauthorized access to a third-party tool used by the company as a data controller.
The threat actor is believed to have extracted certain personal data through a connection with the data processor.
The number of individuals impacted by the breach in Türkiye has not yet been determined, the private broadcaster CNBC-e said, citing a notice from the Personal Data Protection Authority (KVKK).
The affected data included various details belonging to employees of Canva’s customers.
According to the KVKK notice, the exposed information included first and last names, work email addresses, workplace locations and business telephone numbers.
The breach was not limited to employees’ contact information, the authority said.
Customer order forms, contracts, invoices, data protection agreements and master service agreements shared with Canva were also among the affected data, to the extent that they had been provided to the platform.
Other routine business correspondence conducted by companies through Canva may also have been affected, according to the notice.
A security research company has managed to break into OpenAI’s internal systems using the latest software from Anthropic, the firm said Friday, exposing how quickly the technology can carry out sophisticated cyberattacks.
The researchers from security firm Hacktron said they found a security flaw in OpenAI’s public help forum, run by the Discourse platform, that allowed them to take control of the site.
“We immediately reported the initial vulnerability to OpenAI and Discourse and worked with them to coordinate the patch,” Hacktron said in a blog post.
“We appreciate their attention to detail and fast resolution of this issue,” the post added.
OpenAI confirmed the flaw was fixed within about 14 hours of being notified and paid the researchers a $6,500 reward.
“We thank the researchers for contacting us and sharing their findings. We narrowed the permissions on Community sign-in tokens and revoked affected tokens and sessions,” said Drew Pusateri, an OpenAI spokesperson.
The Hacktron researchers said they initially used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 to identify and exploit the software flaw, but struggled to make it work consistently.
After Anthropic released Claude Opus 5, the researchers said the newer model produced a working hack within about three hours.
The hackers did not use Claude Mythos, a more capable Anthropic model that is restricted to a small group of vetted cyber-defense organizations.
Anthropic has described Mythos as having the strongest cybersecurity capabilities of any model it has built.
Hacktron said the underlying software flaw is not unique to OpenAI and is used across many companies’ products, including those made by Slack and Meta.
The firm said it is continuing similar tests at other companies.
The case adds to growing concern among security experts that AI tools are making it faster and cheaper to carry out sophisticated cyberattacks that once required specialized teams and months of work.
Hostile actions by “unfriendly” countries have played a role in Russia’s decision to take control of the assets of Swiss food giant Nestle and French retailer Auchan, the Kremlin said Friday.
The move, announced in a decree by President Vladimir Putin, is the most significant action against Western firms since the seizure of the Russian assets of French dairy company Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg in 2023.
“We are talking about European companies from unfriendly countries,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, adding that these states were “currently involved in the most active manner in military actions against our country.”
He did not name France or Switzerland. But Russia says Western countries that supply weapons to Ukraine, including France, are effectively parties to the conflict.
Switzerland does not provide arms to Ukraine but has angered Russia by imposing sanctions against it. The Swiss government expressed concern at Putin’s move and said it was supporting Nestle in efforts to have it reversed.
Nestle, maker of Nescafe coffee and KitKat chocolate bars, said it was assessing the situation.
“Nestle is committed to taking all necessary steps to protect its rights and ensure continuity of business operations in the interests of all stakeholders, particularly its employees,” the company said in a statement.
It declined to comment further on what action it was considering. Nestle shares were down 2.4% at 1340 GMT.
The move comes amid deep strains between Russia and Europe. Many European governments accuse Moscow of waging a campaign of sabotage across the continent, an allegation Russia denies.
Tighter control
Russia has steadily tightened its grip on foreign-owned assets since launching its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A 2023 decree signed by Putin allows assets from countries Moscow deems “unfriendly” to be placed under temporary administration.
Moscow has also used the framework to raise funds through forced sales, exit taxes and discounts, while rewarding Kremlin-linked insiders.
According to a 2025 estimate by Moscow law firm NSP, the Russian state has seized more than $50 billion of private property, including assets belonging to foreign companies that exited Russia, since the start of the war.
The Russian assets of Nestle and Auchan were transferred to temporary control by L.E.V. Management, a little-known company with no public profile.
Auchan, which runs 230 stores and an online business in Russia, employing about 30,000 people, declined to comment.
Temporary administration
Nestle has six factories in Russia producing coffee, pet care and infant formula products. It generated sales of about 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.4 billion) in Russia in 2021, the last year it released figures, and has about 7,000 employees there.
That amounted to about 2% of group sales, although analysts estimate the contribution has declined since Nestle scaled back operations in Russia.
Nestle has suspended most sales, non-essential imports and exports, advertising and capital investment in Russia, said Bank Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy, who estimates the country now accounts for around 1% of group sales.
“While negative for sentiment and raising the prospect of an asset impairment or unfavorable disposal, we expect a marginal financial impact, given Russia’s limited contribution to group sales,” he said.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper previously reported that a company called KS Logistika asked Putin to place Nestle’s assets under temporary administration, arguing that existing management was preventing expansion.
In previous cases, temporary administration has often been followed by state expropriation, with assets later transferred to Kremlin-linked individuals or companies. Peskov said only temporary administration was under consideration for now.
Other Western companies have sold Russian assets or handed them to local managers in response to sanctions or the threat of state intervention.
Nestle has defended its continued presence in Russia by arguing that it supplies essential food products.
Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Jon Cox said the development did not bode well for Nestle.
“Ultimately, Nestle may end up losing those assets – around 2% of its sales and cash tied up in Russia – for the foreseeable future and any compensation is unlikely to be an offset,” he said.
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