The Week in Switzerland
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Welcome to our selection of some of the biggest – and most colourful – stories in Switzerland over the past seven days.
As tulips blossom outside Basel train station, Swiss politicians have been tiptoeing through a political and economic minefield with the United States.
We also look at what US President Donald Trump is doing for the US tourism industry, why the Swiss embassy in Bangkok is drawing attention to the country’s dangerous roads, and why the Matterhorn disappeared from Toblerone packaging.
At 6:01am on Wednesday, the 31% tariffs on Swiss imports into the United States imposed by the Trump administration a week earlier – the highest levied on any European country – officially came into effect.
On Wednesday afternoon, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter, who holds the rotating Swiss presidency this year, spoke to Trump on the phone. She tweeted afterwards that she had conveyed Switzerland’s position on trade issues as well as ways to address US concerns. She also emphasised that Swiss companies needed positive signals in order to continue or even increase their investments in the US market, according to Economics Minister Guy Parmelin.
A few hours later, Trump announced an immediate 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for most trading partners. Nevertheless, the White House maintained a 10% blanket duty on almost all US imports. This pause gave Switzerland a “certain room for manoeuvre”, Parmelin said, but he pointed out that a 10% tariff was also harmful to the economy, both globally and in Switzerland. “All new tariffs have negative effects,” he said.
Swiss travel agencies are reporting a significant drop in enquiries to the US – a development they are blaming squarely on Donald Trump.
“I’ll never go to the United States in this climate,” declared Louis, a 33-year-old from Lausanne who had been planning a trip to North America since the end of the pandemic. “I don’t want to visit a country that re-elects someone who’s so ideologically insane. You can do stupid things once, but not twice.”
Like Louis, many Swiss have decided to shun the US, and travel agencies are feeling it, Swiss newspaper 24heures reported on Tuesday.
“We’ve seen a 12% drop in our sales in Switzerland. In France, we’re down 20%,” lamented Jérôme Tissot, head of Swiss operations at travel agent Voyageurs du Monde. He said two factors explained this new trend. “First, this is a destination where the price of travel has risen considerably in recent months. So customers are postponing their trip, or shortening their stay. But the main reason is Donald Trump.”
He said that rather than being about money, “it’s a question of values and opposition to Donald Trump. All his opponents no longer want to go there out of a sense of conscience”.
While Voyageurs du Monde has not recorded any cancellations of trips to the US, it has noted that those who are reluctant to accept the Trump administration “are shifting to other destinations, such as Canada”.
Thailand’s roads are among the most dangerous in the world – including for the Swiss. Last year ten motorbike accidents involving Swiss nationals ended fatally. The Swiss embassy in Bangkok is sounding the alarm.
The Swiss love Thailand. “In good years, the glistening sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters attract around 200,000 Swiss tourists to the archipelago, in addition to the more than 10,000 Swiss who have settled in Thailand for the long term,” Blick reported on Wednesday.
The paper quoted the Swiss ambassador, Pedro Zwahlen: “In 2024, we recorded 20 motorbike accidents involving Swiss citizens in Thailand – ten of them fatal. These are only accidents involving motorised two-wheelers, and only in one year!”
Thailand ranked ninth in the world for road deaths in 2021, according to the Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023. The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) says there were an estimated 18,000 deaths in Thailand in 2021 – around 50 a day. Motorbikes were responsible for almost three-quarters of all fatal accidents.
Why did the Matterhorn disappear from Toblerone packaging? Anna van Riesen, country manager for Switzerland for US food multinational Mondelēz International, explains.
Toblerone, the distinctive chocolate bar invented in Bern, has had a rough few years when it comes to PR. After Brexit in 2016 Mondelēz, which owns Toblerone, introduced a lighter, cheaper bar in the UK – “[one of] the dumbest corporate decisions of all time,” according to one customer on social media. In 2018 the chocolate was certified halal (the recipe has always been halal as well as kosher), which angered some people. In 2022 it outsourced some of its production to Bratislava in Slovakia, with the consequence that in 2023, under Swissness rules, Switzerland’s iconic Matterhorn mountain disappeared from Toblerone packaging.
“We replaced the Matterhorn with a generic, i.e. not directly identifiable, mountain as part of a standardisation of product designs,” van Riesen told newspaper 20 Minuten on Thursday in an interview.
“This became necessary because a small part of production had to be relocated abroad for capacity reasons, which prohibits the use of Swissness symbols on these products. And yes, the reactions to this were very emotional. We’d assumed that the difference wouldn’t be so clearly recognisable – and in fact it wasn’t – but the change itself triggered strong emotions, which we had underestimated.”
As a result, Mondelēz decided to put more emphasis on Switzerland being the home of Toblerone. “The Matterhorn may not be back, but the Swiss cross is officially back on the packaging for the first time since the market launch in 1908 – worldwide,” she said, pointing out that 90% of all Toblerone products – around four million packs a day – are produced in Bern and only these are allowed to bear the Swiss cross.
Some readers said they didn’t care what was on the packaging as long as the chocolate tasted good, but most were unimpressed. These two comments are fairly representative:
“Unfortunately, since Toblerone has belonged to Mondelēz it no longer has so much nougat in it. That’s why I don’t buy it anymore. With the Swiss cross Mondelēz only wants to boost sales (‘Swiss Quality’). It’s a shame that Switzerland is being sold out here and in many other areas,” wrote Rosa Berger.
“The unstylised Matterhorn belongs on the Toblerone, not necessarily the Swiss cross. If you understand that, you understand Switzerland,” said mh. “Everything else is just marketing.”
The week ahead
The Expo 2025 world fair is set to open in Osaka, Japan, on Sunday. Switzerland has a chance to shine with an innovative pavilion.
With a month to go before Basel hosts this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, on Monday the organisers will hold a media conference on board a ship on the Rhine and reveal the opening ceremony, the interval acts and the transport concept.
The Swiss population currently stands at nine million. On Tuesday the Federal Statistical Office will publish scenarios on the evolution of the population between 2025 and 2055.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg/sb
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