How Liberation Day rocked Switzerland

When President Donald Trump gathered the world’s media to the White House Rose Garden to unveil America’s “Liberation Day,” Swiss viewers were cautious but optimistic. 

Administration insiders had assured us that we had nothing to fear. During Trump’s first term in office, Switzerland had been the port in the storm of European opinion. As outsiders to the European Union, we were able to forge our own relationship with the American superpower. Our small alpine nation, with its population of 9 million, rose from the eighth largest foreign direct investor in the United States to the sixth. Swiss companies, like Nestle, Stadler and Novartis, ramped up their American operations, generating profits and jobs for both countries. Rolex is currently building a $5 billion headquarters on Fifth Avenue in New York City, two blocks from Trump Tower.

But when Trump brandished his made-for-television tariff chart, three weeks ago, like Moses wielding the Ten Commandments, we were horrified. 

Switzerland had been placed alongside China on Trump’s “list of sinners,” and was getting pummeled with a 31 percent tax. The European Union, which had been font of contempt for MAGA, was only receiving a relatively gentle nudge of 20 percent, and the United Kingdom, led by Labour, a light tap at 10 percent.

How was this possible? Longtime Trump confidants with deep knowledge of Switzerland were equally bewildered.

It soon became clear that Switzerland had fallen victim to fuzzy math. In calculating each country’s the tariff rate, only trade in goods were considered. Not included were services. In the case of Switzerland, our trade position was completely miscalculated. In 2024, the US generated a surplus in services of $21.3 billion. Last year, Switzerland abolished tariffs on imports of US industrial goods.

There was little doubt who was behind all this: Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary; and Peter Navarro, the President’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. 

One person familiar with the matter is unsparing. Lutnick and Navarro “are the worst offenders,” this well-placed source tells me. “They are buffoons. The chart that they put together is completely inaccurate.” I’m told that they’ve even acquired nicknames among fed-up West Wing staff: “Howard Nutlick,” “because he spends so much time kissing the ass of the President”; and “Peter Retardo,” “because who the hell could put a chart like that together and put the President on a podium with it?”

A second source close to Trump concurs. “The President entrusts his advisors to do their freaking homework. These two idiots are ham-handed activists just trying to make a provocative chart that was literally an embarrassment.”

For Switzerland, the damage is done. The largely liberal Swiss press, long on the warpath against the Republican leader, has gone nuclear. 

The political left is attacking the American President as if he was a war criminal. After the fallout with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the president of the Swiss Social Democratic Party, Cédric Wermuth, posted on X, “Fuck you, Mr. President.” Now, he is calling on Switzerland to turn its back on Trump’s America. 

The Swiss government, however, is resisting Trump Derangement Syndrome. It has remained calm and focused on the matter in hand. Switzerland’s reaction is “a textbook example of how two countries who are civilized and work together find a way to address issues,” says a MAGA-world insider.

Thanks to its excellent relations and loyal friends in the President’s circle, Switzerland was one of the first countries to establish a direct line to Trump.

Over the course of a 25-minute phone call, the US President spoke with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter. The Swiss leader was able to persuade Trump to relent. A few hours after their call, Trump announced a 90-day “pause” on his global trade war trade, with the exception of China. Keller-Sutter was the “icebreaker.”

Meanwhile, Lutnick and Navarro are on thin ice. I am told that they are “substantially challenged in their credibility. Nobody believes they have the intellectual acuity to carry out the job. Everyone is looking to Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer [Trump’s secretary of the treasury and trade representative, respectively], and the adults in the room to do the right thing.”

Are the two indeed on the way out? Or are we rather witnessing a Shakespearian plot? 

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” – with Lutnick and Navarro meant to play villains to soften up the governments with the tariff hammer. And with Bessent who can then step in as the gentle hero to coax the battered targets to accept greater concessions.

Last week Swiss officials met with Bessent in Washington for talks at the highest level. I am told that they were offering a “super deal” with new investments by Swiss firms in the value of up to $300 billion. In return Switzerland rose up to one of Trump’s favorite countries with which he wants to work out a trade agreement quickly. 

It looks like the seemingly chaotic tariff shock treatment is paying off.