Switzerland’s president and other top officials were traveling to Washington on Tuesday in a hastily arranged trip aimed at striking a deal with the Trump administration over steep U.S. tariffs that have cast a pall over Swiss industries like chocolates, machinery and watchmaking.
President Karin Keller-Sutter was leading the delegation after last week’s announcement that exports of Swiss goods to the U.S. will face a whopping 39% percent tariff starting Thursday — a move that took many Swiss business leaders by surprise.
That rate is over 2 1/2 times higher than the one on European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S.
It’s also more than the 31% that Switzerland had been set to face when U.S. President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on products from dozens of countries in early April.
The Swiss government said the trip was “to facilitate meetings with the U.S. authorities at short notice and hold talks with a view to improving the tariff situation for Switzerland.”
Keller-Sutter, who also serves as Switzerland’s finance minister, has faced criticism in Swiss media over a last-ditch call with Trump before a U.S. deadline on tariffs expired Aug. 1. She was leading a team that included Economy Minister Guy Parmelin.
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Trump alluded to the call, saying “the woman was nice, but she didn’t want to listen” and that he had told her: “We have a $41 billion deficit with you, Madame … and you want to pay 1% tariffs.”
“I said, ‘you’re not going to pay 1%,'” he added.
It was not immediately clear where that $41 billion figure came from. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States ran a $38.3 billion trade imbalance on goods last year with Switzerland.
Swiss officials have argued that American goods face virtually zero tariffs in Switzerland, and the Swiss government says the wealthy Alpine country is the sixth-biggest foreign investor in the United States and the leading investor in research and development.
“It’s hard to negotiate when you’re dealing with someone as unpredictable as Donald Trump,” said Ivan Slatkine, head of the Federation of Romandie Enterprises, which groups companies in French-speaking Switzerland. He expressed concern that Swiss goods could become less competitive to rival products from the neighboring EU.
“We had a (Swiss) government that gave the impression the deal was done, it only awaited a signature from the president,” he said by phone. “We have the impression that we were punished, but we don’t know why.”
Switzerland’s powerful pharmaceutical industry — which promised tens of billions of investments in the United States in recent months amid the tariff worries — is exempt from the 39% rate. But Slatkine said the steep tariff level could be aimed to send Switzerland’s Big Pharma — epitomized by Roche and Novartis — a message that it too could come under pressure.
The trip comes a day after Switzerland’s executive branch, the Federal Council, held an extraordinary meeting and said it was “keen to pursue talks with the United States on the tariff situation,” the government statement Tuesday said.
After consulting with Swiss businesses, the council said it had developed “new approaches for its discussions” with U.S. officials and was looking ahead to continued negotiations.
“Switzerland enters this new phase ready to present a more attractive offer, taking U.S. concerns into account and seeking to ease the current tariff situation,” a council statement said Monday.
Under the U.S. announcements Friday, Swiss companies will now have one of the steepest export duties — only Laos, Myanmar and Syria had higher figures, at 40-41%.
