US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng are meeting in Geneva in an attempt to cool the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, who is also the country’s finance minister, and Economy Minister Guy Parmelin are set to meet Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a top hotel in Geneva.
Keller-Sutter and Parmelin already met Bessent and Greer in Washington late last month in a bid to negotiate lower tariffs.
Given the size of Switzerland’s trade surplus -- exporting more to the United States than it imports from it -- the Trump administration has threatened to impose a 31 percent levy on Swiss exports to the United States.
For now, Washington is imposing a 10 percent levy on goods coming from Switzerland.
Imports of goods from the United States were valued at 14.13 billion francs, according to Switzerland’s Federal Office for Customs and Border Security.
The United States is Switzerland’s biggest trading partner after the European Union.
There may be only so far that Keller-Sutter can get Washington to bend.
“The 10 percent baseline is for those countries that have (a) balanced budget with us, that are the best,“ Lutnick told CNBC television. “Those who had trade deficits are going to have a higher tariff.”
When publishing its quarterly sales figures, food giant Nestle indicated that its Swiss-made Nespresso coffee pods were likely to be affected.
Faced with the uncertainties, two Swiss heavyweights in the sector took their own initiative.
Novartis announced in mid-April that it was increasing its investments in the United States by $23 billion over five years, with Roche announcing shortly afterwards that it likewise planned to invest $50 billion over five years.
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