US pastor Andrew Brunson is currently under house arrest in Turkey on espionage and terrorism-related charges.
His arrest has further strained ties between Washington and Ankara.
“I call on those in America once again here. Shame, shame! You prefer a pastor over a strategic partner of yours in Nato,” Erdogan told supporters in the Black Sea province of Ordu.
The defiant tone came a day after US President Donald Trump announced a doubling of steel and aluminium tariffs on Turkish imports.
“They are threatening us. You cannot tame this nation with the language of threats,” Erdogan continued as the jubilant crowd booed.
Brunson was detained in October 2016 and arrested in December that year in the aftermath of a failed coup.
Turkey accuses Brunson of having links to US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Ankara blames Gulen for the abortive July 2016 putsch.
The dispute led to Washington and Ankara recently announcing tit-for-tat sanctions on several of each other’s cabinet members.
The impasse has hit Turkey’s lira, bonds and stock markets.
The White House said on Friday that the new tariffs on Turkey will go into effect tomorrow (August 13).
Erdogan said that the Turkish economy is not in a crisis.
“This is not an economy that is going bankrupt, sinking or going through a crisis,” the president later told a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party in the Black Sea province of Rize. “Turkey will get out of the foreign exchange and interest rate spiral as soon as possible.”
“We know very well that the dollar, euro or gold is the point. These are the bullets, shells, missiles of an economic war waged against our country,” Erdogan said, vowing to “break the hands firing these guns” with further measures.
Turkey is dealing with several structural weaknesses in its economy, including a widening current-account deficit, high corporate foreign exchange debt and stubbornly high unemployment rates.
The remedy to current economic problems is to cut interest rates and produce more, Erdogan said.
He also suggested that Ankara would soon switch to trade in local currency with such countries as China, Russia, Iran, and Ukraine.
“We are ready to establish a similar system with the European countries,” Erdogan said, calling on these countries to avoid trading in dollars.
In an opinion piece published on Friday in the New York Times newspaper, Erdogan questioned ties between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) allies.
“Before it is too late, Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives,” Erdogan said.
“Failure to reverse this trend of unilateralism and disrespect will require us to start looking for new friends and allies,” he added.