The Dilemmas of Negotiating Tariffs with Trump: The Swiss Disaster [View all]

[Brenda]

Since President Donald Trump’s April Liberation Day announcement on tariffs, countries have been scrambling to negotiate with the self-proclaimed Dealmaker-in-Chief. Not a simple affair. For while DJT basks in watching heads of state vie for his favors, global leaders try to understand how to negotiate with his ad hoc, spur-of-the-moment style. The negotiating process has been particularly revelatory and catastrophic for the Swiss who have a special two hundred year relationship with the United States. Washington’s announced 39% tariffs on Swiss exports have challenged whatever family bonds existed between the so-called Sister Republics.

The Swiss were “shocked” at the 39% tariffs Trump declared in early August, the highest of any industrial country in the world; the only higher ones for the moment are Brazil (50%), Syria (41%), and Laos and Myanmar (40%). Neighboring European Union countries were taxed at 15%. The 39% tariffs have significant economic consequences for Switzerland since exported goods account for about one-fifth of its GDP, with the U.S. its largest export market. Sixty percent of Swiss exports to the U.S. will be effected including luxury watches and Nespresso coffee capsules.

How can a small country like Switzerland negotiate with Trump in a decidedly asymmetrical balance of power? More generally, how can any country negotiate with someone whose flights of fancy change from one moment to the next? (A TACO may be fine for eating but not for negotiating.) How can any country negotiate with someone who has no sense of history, liberal values, and is undiplomatically transactional?

But the bonhomie did not last very long. Just before the 39% was to go into effect on August 1, a 30-minute telephone call between Keller-Sutter and Trump destroyed whatever mutual confidence remained after three months of negotiations. The late July call was nowhere near the April friendly. During the second call, an American official messaged a Swiss official to tell Keller-Sutter to stop the call because it was not going well. Trump later recounted that he thought he was talking to the prime minister of Switzerland. (There is none.)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/15/the-dilemmas-of-negotiating-tariffs-with-trump-the-swiss-disaster/