Rolex and Gold Given to Trump Before Swiss Deal Queried by Senator

(Bloomberg) — US Senator Ron Wyden asked for a detailed account of Donald Trump’s acceptance of a Rolex table clock and one-kilogram gold bar from Swiss businessmen shortly before the president slashed tariffs he previously imposed on Switzerland.

The Oregon Democrat also asked US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer whether the presents — which Trump accepted as donations to his presidential library — violated laws on those in public office receiving gifts. Wyden made the request in a Jan. 28 letter seen by Bloomberg.

Wyden posed a series of questions, including whether Swiss negotiators had informed Greer of the gifts before or after presenting them to Trump, as well as which US officials recommended cutting the duty rate.

Accepting gifts of “significant monetary value from prominent Swiss businesses” days before Trump agreed to reduce the Swiss tariff rate by more than half “creates an apparent conflict of interest and possible violations of the emoluments clause of the US Constitution,” Wyden, who is the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote.

A White House spokesman said Trump made the deal because the Swiss agreed to reduce trade barriers and invest in the US.

“The only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people, and any suggestion otherwise is completely unfounded,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an emailed statement.

Switzerland was stunned last August when Trump slapped the country with a 39% duty, the highest US tariff rate on any developed country, over what Trump described as an unfair trade imbalance. That tipped the export-dependent Swiss economy into its first contraction in more than two years.

Swiss diplomats struggled to persuade the White House to reconsider before a clutch of Swiss businessmen arranged a November meeting in the Oval Office, during which they presented him with the Rolex clock and the engraved gold bar. Less than two weeks later, Trump agreed to lower the tariffs to 15%.

With the recent surge in the price of gold, the kilogram of gold is currently worth more than $170,000.

Swiss exporters breathed a sigh of relief and some commentators remarked on the diplomatic chops of Switzerland’s business leaders who attended the meeting in what they said was a private capacity. It even earned a “thank-you” from Switzerland’s top trade official Helene Budliger Artieda.

But others saw the appearance of an inappropriate quid pro quo. In November, two Swiss lawmakers called on their country’s top prosecutor to examine whether the gifts were tantamount to bribery of foreign officials. The Attorney General’s office said it would examine the requests, but stressed at the time that it doesn’t mean it would necessarily open an investigation. That review is still ongoing, said a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office.

The gifts were presented to the Presidential Library by the group of businessmen in full compliance with both US and Swiss law, and were cleared with the White House ethics counsel, said a spokesman for MKS-Pamp, the precious-metals company.

A Rolex spokesperson declined to comment.

Wyden’s letter to Greer comes as the country still awaits a US Supreme Court ruling on the legality of a slew of levies Trump introduced last year. The court’s four-week recess that started this week means they remain in place for now, costing importers more than $16 billion every month, according to federal government data.

Wyden further criticized Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week in which he said he made the decision to impose the additional duty on Switzerland over a phone call with then-President Karin Keller-Sutter because “she just rubbed me the wrong way.” The speech raised questions about how the tariff rate came about and whether it related to the President’s justification at the time, Wyden wrote.

“The American public and US importers and consumers who pay the tariffs are entitled to a government that pursues trade policy in the public interest, rather than on the basis of the President’s whims,” Wyden wrote to Greer.

–With assistance from Allegra Catelli and Catherine Lucey.

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