Swiss machinery sector continues to suffer from shrinking demand
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Swiss machinery sector continues to suffer from shrinking demand
The Swiss machine and engineering industry remains caught in a downward spiral. In the current year, the number of orders have continued to fall, as has turnover.
The industry association Swissmem assumes that the order situation will deteriorate even further. The main reason for this is the US tariff hike at the beginning of August.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
In the second quarter of 2025, the machine industry suffered from persistently weak global demand. As Swissmem reported on Tuesday, sales fell by 2.2% and incoming orders by 4.5% between April and June compared to the same period in the previous year.
The order volume even fell by 13% compared to the first quarter. After Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day”, a more severe downturn set in. The number of employees in the industry fell by around 3,100 to 324,600, according to the figures.
US tariff another next blow
This means that the Swiss machine industry has already been confronted with falling sales for nine quarters in a row, said Swissmem President Martin Hirzel at a press conference. “And with the US tariff hammer of August 1, our industry had to take another heavy blow.”
Swissmem warns that the “horrendous US tariffs” of 39% threaten to “massively exacerbate” the existing industrial recession. The association is therefore calling on the government and parliament to take swift domestic measures – such as cutting red tape – to improve the framework conditions for the export industry and save jobs.
What is your opinion? Join the debate:
External Content
Adapted from German by DeepL/ac
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
More
The Swiss want more cooperation with NATO
More
UBS orders bankers to scale back sale of complex currency products
More
Will Switzerland finally do away with imputed rental-value tax on homeowners?
More
Literary world celebrates centenary of Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet
More
Dealing with vaccine hesitancy in the age of misinformation – lessons from Switzerland
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.