Switzerland’s parliament building in Bern. <\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — Switzerland is close to securing a 15% tariff on its exports to the US, in what would be a relief for the country after it was hit with a punishing 39% levy in August, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
A deal may be concluded within the next two weeks, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing ongoing negotiations. They also warned that nothing is finalized and the talks could still come undone, as happened during discussions between US and Swiss trade negotiators in late July.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump later confirmed his administration was \u201cworking on a deal to get their tariffs a little bit lower.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t said any number,\u201d he added when asked about a 15% rate. \u201cBut we\u2019re going to be working on something to help Switzerland along. We hit Switzerland very hard. We want Switzerland to remain successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Swiss government declined to comment. The Office of the US Trade Representative didn\u2019t immediately respond.<\/p>\n
The previous negotiations ended with Switzerland being hit with the highest tariff rate the US imposed on any developed nation. Since then, the country has been trying to secure better terms, an effort that gained momentum last week when a group of Swiss billionaires and corporate executives met Trump at the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
The meeting went so well that Trump subsequently ordered Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to step up direct negotiations, which he did with Swiss counterparts on Friday.<\/p>\n
A deal would mark the successful culmination of weeks of shuttle diplomacy to Washington by Switzerland\u2019s top trade diplomat, Helene Budliger Artieda, combined with the Swiss corporate charm offensive. A 15% rate would match the tariff on the neighboring European Union and be a vast improvement on the 39% bombshell that Trump announced on Aug. 1, Switzerland\u2019s national holiday.<\/p>\n
The initial punitive tariff has been linked to Trump\u2019s view of a perceived trade imbalance between the two countries, specifically a near $40 billion US goods deficit. Switzerland had tried to counter that this was offset by imports of services.<\/p>\n
What made the Aug. 1 announcement worse was that senior Swiss officials believed they had successfully negotiated a better deal with their US counterparts, which only needed sign-off from Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Switzerland’s parliament building in Bern. (Bloomberg) — Switzerland is close to securing a 15% tariff on its exports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1877,114,54,184,85,46,8251,3950],"class_list":{"0":"post-126576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-bloomberg","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-negotiations","15":"tag-switzerland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}