Trump Admin Slashes Major Tariff After Trade Deal Breakthrough

The U.S. and Switzerland have reached a trade deal that will cut tariffs on Swiss goods and increase Swiss investment in America, officials from both countries said Friday.

Duties will be reduced to 15%, the Swiss government said in a statement on Friday, adding that further details will be announced later in the day. The country had previously been hit with a 39% tariff, one of the highest rates applied to any nation under President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff regime.

The agreement lands amid an ongoing Supreme Court challenge to many of the tariffs imposed under the Trump administration.

“We’ve essentially reached a deal with Switzerland,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC on Friday. The deal brings the tariff imposed on Swiss goods in line with the rate placed on imports from the European Union.

“Like all the president’s deals, we keep a tariff,” Greer said. “We retain a tariff on these countries because we have to get the trade deficit under control. But because Switzerland, for example, has agreed to manage its trade surplus with the United States, in terms of making sure that things where they have a trade surplus with us — pharmaceuticals, gold, et cetera — their companies are going to build here, so it’s going to eliminate some of the sources of that surplus.”