Switzerland says ‘disappointed' by Trump tariffs, will try to negotiate
The Swiss government said on Friday that it was 'disappointed' and would decide how to proceed after Trump unveiled the 39-percent rate, more than double the 15 percent being applied for most European Union imports into the US.
The new tariffs, which are set to go into effect on August 7, would prove painful for several key Swiss industries, including manufacturing and watchmaking.
The Swiss government said in a statement on social media that it remains in contact with US authorities and 'still hopes to find a negotiated solution'.
'The Federal Council notes with great regret the intention of the US to unilaterally burden Swiss imports with considerable import duties despite the progress made in bilateral talks and Switzerland's very constructive position,' it added.
The Trump administration unveiled a range of new tariffs on many US trading partners on Thursday, saying the move aimed to address a 'continued lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships'.
Nearly 70 countries now face import duties that were due to come into force on Friday. But most will now begin on August 7, giving countries a few days to try to reach an agreement with Washington to stave off or reduce their respective tariff rate.
'Everyone had been focused on August 1 … and now there is a new deadline,' Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett reported from the White House on Friday morning.
'The reason is so that there can be a little bit more time and breathing space to get some more deals done. There were a few that were very close but didn't quite make the deadline, and so the White House [said] this will allow … for these final agreements to be worked out.'
Trump negotiated trade frameworks over the past few weeks with the EU, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines — allowing the US president to claim victories as other nations sought to limit his threat of charging even higher tariff rates.
He said on Thursday there were agreements with other countries, but he declined to name them.
Asked on Friday if countries were happy with the rates set by Trump, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said, 'A lot of them are.'
The new tariffs also include a 35-percent duty on many goods from Canada, 50 percent for Brazil, and 20 percent for Taiwan. Taiwan said its rate was 'temporary' and it expected to reach a lower figure.
The Trump administration said it decided to impose 39-percent tariffs on Switzerland because of what it called the European country's refusal to make 'meaningful concessions' by dropping trade barriers.
'Switzerland, being one of the wealthiest, highest-income countries on Earth, cannot expect the United States to tolerate a one-sided trade relationship,' a White House official said on Friday.
Swissmem, a group representing the mechanical and electrical engineering industries, said it was 'really stunned' by the US move. 'It's a massive shock for the export industry and for the whole country,' said Deputy Director Jean-Philippe Kohl.
'The tariffs are not based on any rational basis and are totally arbitrary … This tariff will hit Swiss industry very hard, especially as our competitors in the European Union, Britain and Japan have much lower tariffs.'
Stock market tumbles
But Trump's new tariffs have created yet more uncertainty, with many details unclear.
Global stock markets stumbled on Friday, with Europe's STOXX 600 down 1.8 percent on the day and 2.5 percent on the week, on track for its biggest weekly drop since Trump announced his first major wave of tariffs on April 2.
Wall Street also opened sharply lower on Friday.
Reporting from the New York Stock Exchange, Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey explained that US markets were 'definitely down' following the tariffs announcement, but the drop was not as bad as what was seen after the first round of tariffs in April.
'When the first round of tariffs were enacted, the market did drop substantially, but then clawed back a lot of the losses about a month later as deals were worked out. A lot of economists are saying that this time around, the market has priced in tariffs,' Saloomey said.
Still, she said, 'the concern is still that the underlying fundamentals of the economy are under strain and the full weight of the tariffs' has yet to be seen.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
10 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
White House advisers defend Trump's firing of official behind jobs data
The White House has defended United States President Donald Trump's firing of the top official responsible for compiling employment statistics after her dismissal raised concerns about the future credibility of crucial economic data. Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), on Friday, claiming without evidence that the latest jobs report had been 'rigged' to make him look bad. On Sunday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, denied that Trump was 'shooting the messenger' and questioned the accuracy of the figures showing much weaker hiring than previously reported. 'The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable,' Hassett told NBC News's Meet the Press, calling the downward revision of jobs growth for May and June 'unprecedented' and a 'historically important outlier'. 'And if there are big changes and big revisions – we expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example – then we want to know why. We want people to explain it to us.' Speaking on Fox News later on Sunday, Hassett again poured doubt on the official figures, suggesting without evidence that employment statistics can sometimes contain 'partisan patterns'. 'I think what we need is a fresh set of eyes at the BLS, somebody who can clean this thing up,' he told Fox News Sunday. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also defended Trump's dismissal of McEntarfer, saying the president had 'real concerns' about the jobs data. 'You want to be able to have somewhat reliable numbers,' Greer told CBS News' Face the Nation. 'There are always revisions, but sometimes you see these revisions go in really extreme ways. And it's, you know, the president is the president. He can choose who works in the executive branch.' The latest employment figures released on Friday showed that 258,000 fewer jobs were created in May and June than previously estimated, and that a fewer-than-expected 73,000 jobs were added in July, undermining Trump's insistence that the economy has not been negatively affected by his sweeping tariffs. Trump said on Sunday that he would announce a new BLS director, as well as a candidate to fill the position left open by the resignation of Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler, within the next few days. Trump's dismissal of McEntarfer, a career bureaucrat who was appointed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2024, has prompted condemnation from economists and both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. In a statement on Friday, The Friends of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a group co-led by former BLS directors William Beach and Erica L Groshen, accused Trump of politicising the statistics agency and undermining confidence in official government data. 'US official statistics are the gold standard globally,' the group said. 'When leaders of other nations have politicised economic data, it has destroyed public trust in all official statistics and in government science.'
Qatar Tribune
3 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
From Laos to Brazil, Trump's tariffs leave a lot of losers, but even the winners will pay a price
Agencies President Donald Trump's tariff onslaught this week left a lot of losers – from small, poor countries like Laos and Algeria to wealthy U.S. trading partners like Canada and Switzerland. They're now facing especially hefty taxes – tariffs – on the products they export to the United States starting Aug. 7. The closest thing to winners may be the countries that caved to Trump's demands — and avoided even more pain. But it's unclear whether anyone will be able to claim victory in the long run — even the United States, the intended beneficiary of Trump's protectionist policies.'In many respects, everybody's a loser here,'' said Barry Appleton, co-director of the Center for International Law at the New York Law School. Barely six months after he returned to the White House, Trump has demolished the old global economic order. Gone is one built on agreed-upon rules. In its place is a system in which Trump himself sets the rules, using America's enormous economic power to punish countries that won't agree to one-sided trade deals and extracting huge concessions from the ones that do. 'The biggest winner is Trump,' said Alan Wolff, a former U.S. trade official and deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization. 'He bet that he could get other countries to the table on the basis of threats, and he succeededdramatically.''Everything goes back to what Trump calls 'Liberation Day'' – April 2 – when the president announced 'reciprocal'' taxes of up to 50% on imports from countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and 10% 'baseline'' taxes on almost everyone else. He invoked a 1977 law to declare the trade deficit a national emergency that justified his sweeping import taxes. That allowed him to bypass Congress, which traditionally has had authority over taxes, including tariffs — all of which is now being challenged in retreated temporarily after his Liberation Day announcement triggered a rout in financial markets and suspended the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to give countries a chance to negotiate. Eventually, some of them did, caving to Trump's demands to pay what four months ago would have seemed unthinkably high tariffs for the privilege of continuing to sell into the vast American market. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs on its exports to the United States — up from 1.3% before Trump amped up his trade war with the world. The U.S. demanded concessions even though it had run a trade surplus, not a deficit, with the UK for 19 straight years. The European Union and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are much higher than the low single-digit rates they paid last year — but lower than the tariffs he was threatening (30% on the EU and 25% on Japan). Also cutting deals with Trump and agreeing to hefty tariffs were Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Even countries that saw their tariffs lowered from April without reaching a deal are still paying much higher tariffs than before Trump took office. Angola's tariff, for instance, dropped to 15% from 32% in April, but in 2022 it was less than 1.5%. And while Trump administration cut Taiwan's tariff to 20% from 32% in April, the pain will still be felt. '20% from the beginning has not been our goal, we hope that in further negotiations we will get a more beneficial and more reasonable tax rate,' Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te told reporters in Taipei Friday. Trump also agreed to reduce the tariff on the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to 15% from the 50% he'd announced in April, but the damage may already have been done that didn't knuckle under — and those that found other ways to incur Trump's wrath — got hit harder. Even some poorer countries were not spared. Laos' annual economic output comes to $2,100 per person and Algeria's $5,600 — versus America's $75,000. Nonetheless, Laos got rocked with a 40% tariff and Algeria with a 30% levy. Trump slammed Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he didn't like the way it was treating former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing trial for trying to lose his electoral defeat in 2022. Never mind that the U.S. has exported more to Brazil than it's imported every year since 2007. Trump's decision to plaster a 35% tariff on longstanding U.S. ally Canada was partly designed to threaten Ottawa for saying it would recognize a Palestinian state. Trump is a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Switzerland was clobbered with a 39% import tax — even higher than the 31% Trump originally announced on April 2. 'The Swiss probably wish that they had camped in Washington'' to make a deal, said Wolff, now senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 'They're clearly not at all happy.'' Fortunes may change if Trump's tariffs are upended in court. Five American businesses and 12 states are suing the president, arguing that his Liberation Day tariffs exceeded his authority under the 1977 law. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York, agreed and blocked the tariffs, although the government was allowed to continue collecting them while its appeal wend its way through the legal system, and may likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing Thursday, the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sounded skeptical about Trump's justifications for the tariffs. 'If (the tariffs) get struck down, then maybe Brazil's a winner and not a loser,'' Appleton portrays his tariffs as a tax on foreign countries. But they are actually paid by import companies in the U.S. who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. True, tariffs can hurt other countries by forcing their exporters to cut prices and sacrifice profits — or risk losing market share in the United States. But economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that overseas exporters have absorbed just one-fifth of the rising costs from tariffs, while Americans and U.S. businesses have picked up the most of the tab. Walmart, Procter & Gamble, Ford, Best Buy, Adidas, Nike, Mattel and Stanley Black & Decker, have all hiked prices due to U.S. tariffs 'This is a consumption tax, so it disproportionately affects those who have lower incomes,'' Appleton said. 'Sneakers, knapsacks ... your appliances are going to go up. Your TV and electronics are going to go up. Your video game devices, consoles are going to up because none of those are made in America.'' Trump's trade war has pushed the average U.S. tariff from 2.5% at the start of 2025 to 18.3% now, the highest since 1934.
Qatar Tribune
3 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Trump's global tariffs take shape, but consumer impact remains unclear
Agencies American businesses and consumers woke up Friday to find the contours of President Donald Trump's foreign trade agenda taking shape but without much more clarity on how import taxes on goods from dozens of countries would affect them. Late Thursday, Trump ordered new tariff rates for 66 countries, the European Union, Taiwan and the Falkland Islands. Among them: a 40% tariff on imports from Laos, a 39% tariff on goods from Switzerland and a 30% tariff on South African products. Other trade partners, such as Cambodia, had the tax rates on their exports to the U.S. reduced from levels the president had threatened to impose. Trump postponed the start date for all of the tariffs from Friday until Aug. 7. Wendong Zhang, an associate professor in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, said U.S. consumers may be feeling some relief with the tariff rates announced, since many were lower than Trump initially threatened. Indonesia's rate was 19%, for example, down from the 32% Trump announced last spring. But tariffs are a tax, and U.S. consumers are likely to foot at least part of that bill. 'Prices are still going up, they just won't go up as much as in the worst-case scenario,' Zhang said. Companies are dealing with tariffs in various ways. Many automakers appear to be swallowing tariff costs for now. But the world's largest eyewear maker, EssilorLuxottica, said it raised U.S. prices due to tariffs. The maker of Ray-Bans grinds lenses and sunglasses in Mexico, Thailand and China and exports premium frames from Italy. Here's what we know about the tariffs and what their impact will be on U.S. consumers: President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping import taxes on goods coming into the U.S. from nearly every country in April. He said the tariffs were meant to boost domestic manufacturing and restore fairness to global trade. A week later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on the tariffs but did leave in place a 10% tax on most imports. In early July, Trump began sending letters to dozens of countries saying higher tariffs would go into effect Aug. 1 unless they reached trade deals. The administration announced new rates for dozens of countries on Thursday but delayed their implementation until Aug. 7. In the meantime, Trump announced a 35% tariff on imports from Canada would take effect Friday. But Trump delayed action on Mexico and China while negotiations continue. Other duties not specific to countries also remained in place Friday, like a 50% tariff on imported aluminum and steel announced in June. The Trump administration has reached deals with the European Union, Japan and South Korea that put 15% tariffs in place. A deal with the Philippines puts 19% tariffs in place while a deal with Vietnam imposes a 20% levy. On Wednesday, Trump announced a 25% tariff on goods from India and a 50% tariff on goods from Brazil. The U.S. Commerce Department said Thursday that prices rose 2.6% in June, up from an annual pace of 2.4% in May and higher than the Federal Reserve's goal of 2%. Many goods that are heavily imported saw price increases, including furniture, appliances and computers. Zhang, the Cornell economist, said U.S. consumers could see higher prices in the coming months for appliances and other products that contain a large amount of steel and aluminum. Toys, kitchenware, electronics and home goods could also see price spikes. But Zhang said a 15% tariff doesn't mean prices will immediately rise by 15%. Companies were aware of the tariff deadlines and have been trying to stockpile goods and take other measures to mitigate the impacts. Zhang noted that Trump's trade deals often contain specific provisions designed to boost U.S. exports. The agreement with the European Union, for example, calls for European companies to purchase $750 billion worth of natural gas, oil and nuclear fuel from the U.S. over three years. Zhang said semiconductor firms and military contractors could also see bumps in trade. Some U.S. farmers could also see a potential upside, Zhang said. As part of its trade deal, Vietnam agreed to purchase $2 billion in U.S. agricultural products over three years, including corn, wheat and soybeans, according to the International Trade Council. But Zhang cautioned that agricultural agreements tend to be short-lived. Over the longer term, the uncertainty over tariffs could cause countries like China to back away from U.S. agricultural markets and look for other partners, Zhang said. The tariffs will almost certainly result in higher food prices, according to an analysis released this week by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The U.S. simply doesn't make enough of some products, like bananas or coffee, to satisfy demand. Fish, beer and liquor are also likely to see price hikes, the foundation said. Conagra Brands, the maker of Hunt's canned tomatoes, Reddi-wip and other brands, said in July that tariffs – particularly the 50% tax on imported aluminum and steel -- will add $200 million annually to its costs. The company said it's shifting some of its suppliers but also expects to raise prices. Ben Aneff, managing partner at Tribeca Wine Merchants and president of the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance, said that beginning Friday shoppers will see prices rise 20% to 25% at his store and others because of tariffs and the declining value of the dollar. 'Nobody can afford to eat the tariff. It gets passed on,' Aneff said. Aneff said shoppers haven't felt the impact from higher duties until now because distributors and retailers accelerated shipments from France and other European countries earlier in the year. But with the tariff rate bumping to 15%, Aneff expects European wine prices to jump 30% in September. Ninety-seven percent of clothing and shoes sold in the U.S. are imported, primarily from Asia, according to the American Apparel & Footwear Association said. China leads the pack, but companies have been shifting more of their sourcing to Vietnam, Indonesia and India. And prices are already on the rise. Steve Lamar, president and CEO of of the trade group, declined to estimate price increases because he said the situation continues to be in flux. He also said shoppers will see higher costs from tariffs play out in other ways starting this fall. Companies may drop products because they're too expensive or reduce promotions, he said. Matt Priest, president and CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America, estimates prices for shoes are starting to go up for the back-to-school shopping season. He estimates price increases in the 5% to 10% range. Lululemon said in June that price increases will be modest and apply to a small portion of its assortment, while Ralph Lauren said it would be hiking prices for this fall and next spring to offset tariffs. Bjorn Gulden, CEO of Germany-based Athletic wear giant Adidas, told investors Wednesday that the company is reviewing different price increases for products for the U.S. but no decision has been made. 'Tariffs (are) nothing else than a cost,' he said. 'And regardless of what people are saying, you can't just throw a cost away. It's there.'
