The Federal Council lacks contacts with Trump

The government wants to explain in the United States, which is why it feels the punitive tariffs as not correct. But she has a problem: she has no contacts with Trump and his closest environment.

When Donald Trump held his display board live in the television cameras on Wednesday evening, Helene Budliger Artieda, the State Secretary of the State Secretariat for Economy (Seco), was shocked. Trump explicitly called Switzerland a number of horrors: 32 percent penalty.

Switzerland was not prepared for such a worst case scenario. In her negative scenario, she assumed that China would be filled with a 60 percent punitive tariff and all other countries with 25 percent. The scenario assumed that the growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) (GDP) was slightly dropped from 1.4 to 1.1 percent.

For many employees of the Seco, Trump’s hammer work was called until after midnight, for some work all night. What the Seco employees caught: From April 9, the United States occupied Swiss products with 32 percent penalty. Preliminary exception: pharmaceutical products. It is therefore massively higher than that of the EU with 20 percent, the Great Britain (10 percent) or Japan (24 percent).

This should do that loudly and unmistakably, emphasizes a party colleague Spuhler, SVP Councilor Hannes Germann. « Now the » Method full post « is needed, » says the politician, who is more known for quiet tones. Switzerland always tries « with fine diplomatic nuances », but this does not understand the Trump administration.

The Federal Council actually wants to travel to the United States as quickly as possible in order to clean up any misunderstandings, as Minister of Economic Affairs Parmelin formulated. He thinks of the approximately 400,000 highly paid areas that Swiss industry offers in the United States. Or that Switzerland is in sixth place in the United States. And because she has abolished the industrial tariffs: 99.5 percent of those imported into Switzerland are duty -free.

You have to find out in direct contact as quickly as possible, which is why the punitive tariffs were imposed in this form, Parmelin emphasized: «This is extremely important. At the moment there are many uncertainties – and dense fog. »

The Federal Council has no contact with Trump

Only: It’s not that easy. This is due to the fact that the Federal Council has no contact with US President Donald Trump and his closest environment. Federal President Keller-Sutter admitted this to a question. « So far there has been no way to maintain contacts at the highest level, » she said. The Administration Trump has so far been practically not present at international meetings.