Trump’s Gaza deal, a surprisingly resilient global economy, and Yellowstone bison

Bison graze in Yellowstone National Park. Keystone

Welcome to our press review of events in the United States. Every Wednesday we look at how the Swiss media have reported and reacted to three major stories in the US – in politics, finance and science.

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“All I’ve done all my life is deals. The greatest deals just sort of happen… That’s what happened right here. And maybe this is going to be the greatest deal of them all.” Whether US President Donald Trump’s prediction about peace in the Middle East – made following the announcement of a ceasefire he helped broker between Israel and Hamas – comes true remains to be seen, but the Swiss media have been giving him cautious credit.

And more tentative good news: the global economy appears to be weathering Trump’s tariffs surprisingly well. Why is this? Plus free-roaming bison in Yellowstone National Park are stimulating the ecosystem and contributing to biodiversity.

Donald Trump speaks to the media on Air Force One, heading back to Washington on Tuesday. Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved

With the ceasefire in Gaza, US President Donald Trump has achieved what world diplomacy failed to do for two years, according to Swiss public broadcaster, SRF. “Trump has earned this applause,” declared the Tages-Anzeiger.

“The ceasefire is fragile and a structure for peace is not in sight,” said SRF in an analysis on Wednesday. “But the hostages are back in Israel and the people in the Gaza Strip are no longer under a hail of bombs.”

SRF acknowledged that Trump’s personality had made a “decisive contribution” to the Gaza agreement. “Driven by the desire to go down in history as a peacemaker, he put aside traditional considerations and put Israel under pressure,” it said. He was also able to lean on leaders such as his “pal” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to influence Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Will the peace hold? “The Trump plan may be a good start, but peace will only come from a just solution based on respect for international law,” wrote the former Palestinian Minister of Culture, Anouar Abou Eisheh, in Le Temps.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) noted that “even Trump’s worst critics seem to be slowly realising that his policies are more ambivalent and multi-layered than they are portrayed. It said it was “almost comical” how media which had previously described Trump as a danger to humanity on a daily basis were now suddenly calling for him to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. “Standing up for peace changes public perception, and this is probably also why Trump has such an obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize. It would be a kind of public proof for him that everyone who calls him a racist and fascist are wrong.”

For the Tages-Anzeiger in Zurich, the Gaza ceasefire shows that “if Trump uses his power and influence, if he focuses his energy on foreign policy crises such as in the Middle East instead of further undermining US democracy, he may succeed in stopping the endless cycle of violence”. If that were to happen, it said, Trump would indeed be a serious candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize – “an honour that one does not demand but receives”.

• From Gaza success to Ukraine dilemmaExternal link – SRF (German)

• Tages-Anzeiger editorialExternal link (German, paywall)

• NZZ editorialExternal link (German, paywall)

• Op-edExternal link by former Palestinian Minister of Culture Anouar Abou Eisheh – Le Temps (French, paywall)

• The humanitarian cost of Israel’s war in GazaExternal link – Swissinfo report

Posing on Wall Street. Copyright The Associated Press 2019

The global economy is doing better than feared six months ago, but US President Donald Trump’s tariff policy remains a major risk, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) warned on Wednesday.

The NZZ was reporting the conclusions of the World Economic Outlook, published on Tuesday by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF said it expects global growth of 3.2% for this year and 3.1% for 2026. This is up from the 2.8% and 3% it predicted in April, just after Trump had shocked the world – and especially Switzerland – by announcing bilateral punitive tariffs.

The IMF now reckons the negative effects are at the lower end of expectations: the global economy is proving to be more resilient than the IMF experts in Washington had feared. Why? IMF director Kristalina Georgieva gave four reasons. First, emerging economies in particular had stabilised their monetary and fiscal policies, which is why capital outflows were limited during the recent turbulence.

Second, the private sector has shown itself to be very adaptable. Many companies have adapted their supply chains or brought forward exports to the US in order to avoid the tariffs. The IMF also said that the flourishing investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, particularly in the US, had made a considerable contribution to economic growth.

A third reason for cautious optimism is that the US tariffs have had less of an impact on the rest of global trade than was feared. “The world has so far avoided sliding into a trade war based on retaliation,” Georgieva said last week. However, the NZZ pointed out that Trump’s tariff dispute with Beijing, which has flared up again, showed that the situation remains extremely volatile.

The fourth positive factor Georgieva mentioned was the very favourable financial conditions in many places.

Nevertheless, the IMF report concluded by warning of increasing political pressure on central banks, which could reduce the credibility of their monetary policy. For once, this warning is not only directed at countries such as Turkey or Argentina, but obviously also at the US, where Trump has been urging the Federal Reserve to massively lower the key interest rate for months.

• The global economy is weathering Trump’s tariffs surprisingly well so farExternal link – Neue Zürcher Zeitung (German, paywall)

• Live ticker on Trump’s tariffsExternal link – Tages-Anzeiger (German)

• How the new US tariffs are already impacting the Swiss economy – Swissinfo

From Wall Street to Yellowstone National Park… AP Photo/Matthew Brown

A boom in the number of free-roaming bison in Yellowstone National Park in the western United States is stimulating the ecosystems that feed them and contributing to the biodiversity of birds and amphibians.

Le Temps in Geneva reported on Monday that of the 30-60 million bison that lived in the US at the beginning of the 19th century, only a thousand remained in 1900, before efforts were made to protect them. Today, their population is estimated at 400,000. Most live in small herds of a few hundred. Around half the bison live on ranches, where they are reared for their meat, and half on federal land, where 75,000 animals are slaughtered every year to regulate their population.

Yellowstone’s rewilding policy, begun in the 1960s, has increased the bison population to around 5,000, the limit set by the park authorities for 2024.

Despite the geographical constraints imposed on them – they are captured and slaughtered if they leave the park boundaries – the bison move according to the season to find favourable pastures. “This region gives us an excellent opportunity to study their impact on vegetation,” explains Bill Hamilton, co-author of a study on bison living north of Yellowstone Park published in Science in August.

“By comparing patches of land that are accessible and others that are not […], we can see that the grasslands are resilient in the face of intensive grazing by the endemic large herbivores,” he says. This resilience can be explained by the complex interactions between herbivores, plants, nutrients and soil bacteria.

Also, by trampling the soil, bison break up plant debris, which speeds up its decomposition. “Their deep footprints in the soil create small craters – a favourable environment for all kinds of frogs, salamanders and reptiles – and allow birds to drink,” Hamilton says.

• ‘Yellowstone’s bison are the guardian angels of their territory’External link – Le Temps (French, paywall)

• Will a project to reintroduce European bison into Swiss forests work? – Swissinfo

The next edition of ‘Swiss views of US news’ will be published on Wednesday, October 22. See you then!

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