A bridge over troubled political waters, Trump Accounts, and the Fauci hearings
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.
At a time when the fashion seems to be for building barriers with other countries, it’s nice to see the Canadians open a physical bridge with their neighbours – a few days after the US president slapped a 50% tariff on a wide range of Canadian goods.
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After eight years of construction, a new bridge linking the United States and Canada is set to significantly ease border traffic – despite opening in the middle of a trade war.
“For almost a century, all traffic at the busiest border crossing between the US and Canada passed over the same bridge. Now, the new six-lane Gordie Howe Bridge is taking over,” Swiss public broadcaster SRF wrote on Sunday. In future the bridge, named after a Canadian ice hockey legend, is set to handle almost half of all cross-border traffic.
Canada has fully funded the new 2.5km construction, at a cost of CA$6.4 billion (CHF3.7 billion), but the Americans will also benefit from it.
Every day more than CHF500 million worth of goods are transported across this section of the border, which links Detroit, Michigan, with Windsor, Ontario. But beyond the wider economic impact, small businesses on both sides of the border are also expecting positive effects. A barber from the Sandwich neighbourhood in Windsor hoped new customers would come from the US, he told Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
Canada inaugurated the Gordie Howe International Bridge on July 24 without a US representative present. The joint ceremony with the US was cancelled following the announcement three days earlier of new US tariffs on several Canadian products.
The opening of the bridge, originally planned for the start of the year, had been postponed several times at the whim of Donald Trump. The US president had blocked it on multiple occasions and demanded a share of the revenue.
RTS concluded, however, that “political manoeuvring and cross-border disputes have done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm generated by this bridge, which has been open to traffic since [last] Monday”.
Seven million children in America already have a “Trump Account”, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reported on Wednesday. But what will happen if the Republicans lose the presidency in 2028?
A thousand dollars (CHF810) from the state – “just like that and tax-free”, the NZZ wrote. “All American babies born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, will benefit from this if their parents set up a Trump Account for them. No wonder that seven million accounts have already been opened since the programme’s launch a month ago.”
The Zurich paper was not surprised by the popularity of the accounts – “after all, who would voluntarily turn down free money?” From the Trump administration’s perspective, too, the scheme has so far been a success, it wrote, explaining that the administration aims to use the accounts to “supplement retirement provision, improve financial literacy among the population and enable them to participate more fully in the stock market, which has brought significant wealth to millions of Americans over the past decades”.
On the account holder’s 18th birthday, the Trump Account – its official name – is converted into a standard retirement savings account.
The scheme has received fairly good marks from independent experts, the NZZ noted. “Families with money could now provide their children with a better start in life,” financial expert Allison Schrager of the Manhattan Institute, a liberal-conservative thinktank, told the NZZ. They fund their children’s university education or provide the deposit for a house purchase. Thanks to these new savings, children from poorer families are better able to keep up. “No one’s going to become a billionaire because of it,” she says, “but it reduces the unfairness of birth a little.”
But what will happen if a Democrat moves into the White House in 2028? Will the Trump Accounts face the axe? Schrager believes the Democrats would rename the initiative but continue to run it. “The accounts were their idea. But they would have funded them with bonds rather than shares, so that nobody would lose their money.” In fact, Democrat Senator Cory Booker had launched several attempts at “Baby Bonds” since 2018 but never managed to secure a majority.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung concluded by pointing out an “ironclad rule” that applies to Democrats and Republicans alike: “Once the public has become accustomed to a new government benefit, it’s almost impossible to abolish it. Trump Accounts are likely to remain in place for a long time to come, whatever they are called.”
The recent US Senate hearing of Anthony Fauci, the former White House medical adviser during the Covid pandemic, was “reminiscent of the dark days of McCarthyism”, according to Le Temps.
The hearings held in the US Congress last Wednesday involving Fauci reflect a “dark moment for science” in the United States, Le Temps wrote in an editorial on Friday. Fauci was “verbally attacked and insulted by Republican senators whose forte is not science”, the Geneva newspaper said. “Republicans who still believe that hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin – whose effectiveness has never been proven – should have been used rather than Covid vaccines.”
Fauci has been questioned more than 200 times by Congress since the start of the pandemic. Le Temps said. “But just as in the days of McCarthyism, Fauci had to be made an example of – the symbol of a scientific establishment operating in the shadows to the detriment of the people. A well-known conspiracy-theory narrative.”
Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) was a Republican senator convinced that communists and Soviet spies and sympathisers had infiltrated the US government, universities, Hollywood and elsewhere. He led aggressive investigations into “un-American activities”, involving the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals.
“The politicisation of science is having devastating effects: a dramatic fall in the number of researchers and PhD students, and the scrapping of major research programmes,” Le Temps wrote. It noted the effects on the Swiss National Science Foundation: “Some grant holders in America want to return home or go elsewhere. Those wishing to study abroad are turning their backs on the United States.”
“The US, which has long been admired worldwide for its research, is in the process of sabotaging its status as a scientific superpower,” the newspaper concluded. Meanwhile, China is investing “astronomical sums” in this field. In early-stage clinical trials, China (47% of the global market) now far outstrips the United States (25%). “For China, science is a guarantee of progress, prosperity and power. For Trump’s America, it has become an enemy.”
The next edition of ‘Swiss views of US news’ will be published on Wednesday, August 12. See you then!
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