The most serious economic pressure came exactly two years after the failed coup from more than 3,700 kilometres away from Turkey – from the USA. The Turkish economy was thrust into a full-blown currency crisis when in August 2018 the US president, Donald Trump, raised tariffs on Turkey's steel and aluminium exports to the US, resulting in the country's most serious economic crisis since the AKP had come to power 16 years before. Even the 2008 global financial crisis and economic downturn had not caused this level of decline in Turkey's economy. The Turkish lira lost more than 40 per cent of its value in the first two weeks of August. The pretext for Trump's punishing attack on Turkey was the continued detention of the US Presbyterian missionary Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in October 2016 on charges of espionage and accused of involvement in the attempted coup of July that same year.

There was, however, a background to these economic problems; they were not simply the result of Trump's tariffs. Within a year after the 2013 Taksim Gezi protest movements, the Turkish economy had begun to display some serious problems. In 2014, many members of the country's economic and financial team leading key institutions were replaced with political loyalists with little or no experience. Government intervention in several major banks risked an impact on the entire financial sector. The government's haphazard audits and its pestering of local and foreign investors for political reasons also damaged the economy. These domestic factors relating to mismanagement contributed to the economic and financial headaches but were not the main reason for the crisis. As in many other turning points in Turkey's economic development process for the past two decades, and the development processes of other dependent economies, the main structural reason for this sudden setback could be found in the global context. There had been signs of dark clouds accumulating in the global system since 2012, when the growth of the world economy weakened considerably and contiuned to remain weak.