After the American elections, during last December’s session of Parliament, Guy Parmelin responded to a question from Martin Candinas (C/GR), who wanted to know how Switzerland was preparing for the return of Donald Trump to the White House. The Vaudois responded placidly that Switzerland was going to intensify its networks with the new republican team in place: “Switzerland continues to work on the identification and elimination of obstacles to trade and it is always interested in strengthening its commercial relations with the United States.”
In other words, seen from Berne, from Biden to Trump, we do not expect big changes. In an article in “Swissfino”, Stefan Legge, international trade expert at the Institute of Law and Economics at the University of St. Gallen, makes this observation: “Small powers are likely to slip under the radar of the Trump administration. A statement confirmed by David Sylvan, professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva: “The Swiss must understand that they have extremely low priority in Washington.”
Donald Trump pursues macroeconomic policy like a businessman with the diplomacy of the strongest as a backdrop. Protectionist measures and the weapon of customs duties could, however, hit Switzerland where it hurts, in its pharmaceutical industry, which represents more than half of Swiss exports on the other side of the Atlantic, for some 30 billion francs per year.
In the tumult of the world, it would therefore be enough for Switzerland to remain discreet and pull its chestnuts out of the fire without attracting too much attention, as it has always done. Maybe. But Donald Trump’s second presidency is also changing the political climate throughout the world, in Europe and in Switzerland. For his inauguration on January 20, he invited a good group of European sovereignists, including Eric Zemmour, Marion Maréchal, Georgia Meloni, Viktor Orban, elected officials from the AfD, the Patriots for Europe group in Brussels and the populist British Nigel Farage.
-These invitations are an American guarantee for these movements which have been undermining European construction for years. Elon Musk’s support for the AfD reinforces this form of American interference in the Old Continent against social democracy. This configuration also has an influence on the political climate in Switzerland, where the return of Donald Trump is the bread and butter of the UDC, whose program is close on migration issues, the climate, gender, inclusion and everything that looks like “wokism”.
But, by showing allegiance to the new Washington team, these sovereignist movements are also in contradiction with their own values, first and foremost that of their independence. It is not certain that the base of their electorate feels the same feeling of admiration for Donald Trump and his techno-oligarchic clique, who want to dominate the world with algorithms.
