Of all the countries that expected to be immune to President Trump’s tariffs, Switzerland was at the top of the list.
The tiny Alpine nation, famous for its political neutrality, fine chocolates and precision watches, had eliminated industrial tariffs recently on all imports, including American goods. It has kept the European Union at arm’s length to avoid entanglement in trans-Atlantic trade fights. Swiss companies generate half a million jobs in the United States.
So when Mr. Trump imposed double-digit tariffs on Wednesday, no one was more surprised than the Swiss. Compounding the situation was that no one knew the exact amount: 31 percent or 32 percent. The White House and the U.S. Trade Representative published different numbers, and even the government in Bern was not clear.
“The U.S.A. has relied on its own calculations, which Switzerland cannot comprehend,” Karin Keller-Sutter, the Swiss president, told reporters on Thursday. She said that although Switzerland would not retaliate with tariffs of its own, officials would seek talks with Washington in hopes of bringing the rate down.
It was a classic display of sang-froid. And yet, the Swiss are indignant.
Switzerland’s levy is higher than that of the European Union, which was hit with a 20 percent tariff. And Britain is subject to a minimum tariff of 10 percent. That means that a Swiss chocolate bar or medical device exported to the United States would face a duty more than 20 percent higher than similar British-made products, a logic that the Swiss called “incomprehensible.”
“The levy is completely arbitrary, precisely because our tax on imports, including American ones, are zero,” said Jean-Philippe Kohl, the deputy director of Swissmem, which represents 1,400 Swiss technology manufacturers. “Based on this, Donald Trump’s arguments make no sense.”
Switzerland ranks sixth among foreign investors in the United States and first for investments in research and development, mainly because of investments by the Swiss pharmaceutical giants including Roche and Novartis. Switzerland’s goods trade surplus with the United States is mainly attributable to exports of chemical and pharmaceuticals also made in Switzerland and the gold trade. So far, all of those items are exempt from the tariffs although Mr. Trump has been saying for weeks that he may yet include pharmaceuticals.
Still, the move sent tremors across Swiss industries, from chocolate to cheese.
Daniel Bloch, the chief executive of Chocolats Camille Bloch, a family-run chocolatier founded in 1929, exports specialty kosher chocolates to the Orthodox community in the United States. The brands, Ragusa and Torino, are often featured at Passover and other holidays. A typical kosher chocolate bar, which currently faces a 5 percent import duty, is now priced at around $3. After the higher tariffs go into effect on Saturday, the price could shoot up to as high as $5, a rapid increase that Mr. Bloch said could be too much for some consumers to afford.
“It is happening so fast that it doesn’t give us a chance to make good pricing that consumers can adapt to,” Mr. Bloch said. After the tariff announcement, he desperately tried to contact his distributor in the United States. But the distributor was so busy juggling the impact of all his imports that Mr. Bloch could not get through.
“It seems that Switzerland now is seen as an offender to the United States because we are exporting goods,” he said. “We just got punched in the mouth, and we have to get up on our feet now.”
Watchmakers, which account for 16 percent of all Swiss exports, quickly calculated how much they would have to raise prices.
At Breitling, one of Switzerland’s most well-known watch brands, the chief executive, Georges Kern, said his company was working to come up with a plan for the U.S. market. As a luxury item, Breitling watches appeal to consumers who can afford costly products. “Of course the tariffs don’t help, but the situation is not as dramatic as it seems,” he told the Swiss news agency AWP, adding that he was confident that the uproar would settle down within a few months.
But other players in the Swiss economy were not so sure. Switzerland’s tech and machinery manufacturers reacted with alarm, with many midsize companies that make precision machine tools, medical supplies and more grappling with products that will suddenly become a lot less competitive in America.
“Under these circumstances, other markets are becoming even more important for Swiss companies,” Mr. Kohl, the trade group representative, said, adding that the focus is increasingly turning to emerging markets such as India, South America, Southeast Asia and China.
Even so, Ms. Keller-Sutter said that escalating a trade war with the United States by retaliating “is not in the interest of Switzerland,” in part because the government would prefer to keep its pharmaceutical industry out of Mr. Trump’s cross hairs.
Economists point out that given the Trump administration’s aim to balance yawning trade deficits like the $38.5 billion that the United States had with Switzerland in 2024, there was a certain logic to the calculation behind the rate.
The idea behind Mr. Trump’s tariffs, to bring manufacturing of popular products to the United States, however, is anathema to Swiss companies whose brands and the items they sell are inextricably linked to the mountainous country renowned for its precision production.
Victorinox, maker of the red Swiss Army Knife, which relies on customers in the United States for 20 percent of its foreign sales, flatly rejected the idea.
“This Swiss icon is inextricably linked with the quality promise ‘Made in Switzerland,’” Carl Elsener Jr., the chief executive for Victorinox, said of the popular pocketknives. “We will stand by this.”
Given the exemptions, only about 30 percent of Swiss export goods are affected by the tariffs, said Reto Foellmi, a professor of economics at the University of St. Gallen. “That is, of course, not nothing, but it is not the full amount,” he said.
He added that the smaller Swiss manufacturers will be hit the hardest, although the products that they make are typically luxury goods for which consumers are more likely to be willing to pay higher prices.
“In other words, the essential question is always, who pays the price? Is it paid by the American consumer? Or how is it divided up,” Mr. Föllmi said. “Or do the companies decide not to supply the American market at all?”
Mr. Bloch, the chocolate maker, would prefer to keep selling into the United States, although if he had to pull out, it would not devastate his company. Even so, “this is emotionally tough,” he said.
“We always saw the United States as a trustworthy, reliable market,” he said. “But now it has become unpredictable.”