According to managers, Swiss companies are increasingly turning away from the United States and are more economically more oriented towards Southeast Asia and the EU.
Almost two thirds of 280 managers surveyed stated that their image of the United States deteriorated last year.
At the same time, 38 percent of the EU rated the EU more positively, in Southeast Asia this value is even 38 percent – with less than 10 percent negative feedback, as shown in the Swiss Managers Survey published on Sunday.
The background to mood change include new US tariffs and an increasingly protected trade policy. These already feel this in concrete terms: around 70 percent describe the effects on the domestic economy as negative. As a result, many companies rely on diversification. A quarter checks to reduce the dependence on US software and cloud services; 5 percent have already taken this step.
Despite the growing skepticism towards the USA, Swiss managers clearly reject protectionist countermeasures. More than half of the respondents speak out against retaliation tariffs.
The representative survey was carried out together by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), the Scuola Universitria Professional Della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI) and the Haute École Arc (HE-Arc). In May, they surveyed Swiss companies to deal with the new customs policy of the United States and their effect on the Swiss economy.