The Swiss stock market takes the brunt of customs duties
Keystone-SDA
The Swiss stock market was shaken on Monday morning after Friday’s blow from tariff talks. It remains to be seen how the Swiss government will proceed following the announcement of 39% customs duties.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The Swiss Market Index fell as much as 1.9% Monday, although it pared declines to 0.88% as of 10:15 am in Zurich on optimism that the tariffs will ultimately be a tool to drive trade negotiations. The benchmark is now up about 1% for 2025.
The Swiss franc fell for a second day against the euro, sliding 0.3%. It had weakened 0.5% on Friday, the biggest drop since May, after Trump’s announcements late last week.
According to concordant press reports, the government is to meet on Monday for a virtual crisis session, but no confirmation from the Federal Chancellery or the federal departments was available on Monday morning.
+ Swiss government plans to keep negotiating with the US on tariffsExternal link
The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) is also due to meet representatives of the economy in the wake of the tariffs on Swiss imports announced by US President Donald Trump.
Watch and luxury goods stocks, as well as pharmaceuticals, were particularly upset by the unexpected level of taxes imposed on Swiss exports. Last Friday, there was no stock market trading in Switzerland due to the national holiday.
Translated from German by DeepL/jdp
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
