Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday vowed to "end the monopoly" of the American dollar, denouncing the U.S. as acting like "wild wolves" on trade.

"America behaves like wild wolves. Don't believe them," Erdogan said at a business forum in Kyrgyzstan over the weekend, according to RT. "Using the dollar only damages us. We will not give up. We will be victorious."

According to Al Jazeera, Turkey’s currency, the lira, has fared poorly against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of this year. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum after Turkey detained American pastor Andrew Brunson.

He added that Turkey and its global trading partners “need to gradually end the monopoly of the dollar once and for all by using local and national currency among us.”

Nick Danforth, a senior policy analyst with the Bipartisan Policy Center, wrote in The New York Times last week that Erdogan’s escalating conflict with Washington, D.C. "reflects not only nationalist bravado but also an assumption about the rapid advent of a more multipolar world," and that "he seems to be gambling that Washington has proved more effective in alienating its allies than he has, and that the American-led global order collapses before the Turkish economy does."

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