Critics Say Gifts Caused Trump to Cut Tariffs on Swiss Goods

President Donald Trump is taking heat for making a wild claim about how he concocted at least one of his tariffs — and it seems to undermine his own argument for imposing them in the first place, Ed Mazza reported for HuffPost.

Trump cut the Swiss tariffs to only 15% from 39% after a Swiss delegation gave Trump several gifts, including a Rolex watch and a gold bar.

“I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland,” he told Larry Kudlow during a Fox Business interview.

“They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe.”

Trump claimed the US had a $42 billion trade deficit with Switzerland, a number similar to one he’d used before and one that analysts said ignored trade in services, which actually put the deficit at $8 billion.

Trump cut the Swiss tariffs to only 15% from 39% after a Swiss delegation gave Trump several gifts, including a Rolex watch and a gold bar.

The decision to give him those items is now under investigation in Switzerland.

Trump said he imposed a 30% tariff on goods from Switzerland, leading to “an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland.” But that call didn’t seem to go the way Trump wanted.

“She was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive,” he said. “And I didn’t really like the way she talked to us, so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised her to 39%.”

There are a few problems with Trump’s claims, starting with the fact that Switzerland doesn’t have a prime minister. Worse, he claimed that “emergencies” compelled him to raise tariffs. The tenor of the Swiss leader he dealt with at that time did not qualify as an “emergency.”