Ban on election observers, tariffs with China, and plummeting birth rates
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.
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting,” wrote British playwright Tom Stoppard. Following the Trump administration’s exclusion of OSCE election observers from November’s midterm elections, some commentators in Switzerland are concerned that this clears the way for manipulating the result.
Help us improve the press review
As a reader of our weekly press review, your feedback is important to us. Please take two minutes to answer a short survey and help us improve our journalism. This survey is anonymous and all data is confidential.
👉 [Take the surveyExternal link]
The United States has not invited any OSCE observers to November’s mid-term elections, for the first time in almost 25 years. This is a move more commonly associated with Russia, say several Swiss media.
“In early August, the OSCE expressed its “grave concern” following Russia’s decision not to invite observers to monitor the elections to the Duma, the federal parliament. On Wednesday, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe described the US decision to do the same as ‘regrettable’,” Le Temps wrote last week.
“For the first time since 2002, Washington has chosen to do without external, ‘non-partisan’ observers of its electoral process, in breach of its commitments,” the Geneva newspaper said. “While Moscow’s stance comes as no surprise – this is the third refusal – the fact that Donald Trump is following in Vladimir Putin’s footsteps marks a new stage in the widening rift between the United States and the European continent.”
Trump’s decision comes as no surprise to the diplomatic correspondent of Swiss public broadcaster SRF. “Behind the scenes, the US spent months trying to persuade the OSCE to withdraw its report on the 2020 election, when Joe Biden was elected president,” he wrote on Thursday. “Donald Trump still claims to this day that Biden wasn’t elected at all. However, the OSCE came to the clear conclusion that the election was conducted correctly – and that doesn’t sit well with Trump and his supporters.”
So what’s the US’s game? For the time being, there has been no explanation from the US for the non-invitation.
But, according to SRF, it’s not implausible that the Trump administration wants to use the exclusion of OSCE election observers to clear the way for actually manipulating the election result. “If the Republicans lose, they could also claim that the elections were not conducted properly,” it said, adding that this would be much more difficult if the OSCE confirmed that the election had been fair. “After all, OSCE election observation is regarded as the ‘gold standard’, so to speak.”
Lower tariffs on electric razors, camels and rabbit fur: at last week’s summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping the two heads of state “kicked the major issues down the road”, said the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).
Expectations for the summit in Washington had been modest from the outset, the NZZ wrote on Monday. “It’s now becoming clear that this was justified.”
“The only tangible outcome is an agreement under which the US and China intend to lower tariffs on selected, so-called non-sensitive goods. Beijing, for example, intends to significantly reduce tariffs on rabbit fur, dolphins, camels and goose liver pâté from the US. In return, the US government has promised, among other things, to lower tariffs on Chinese toys, electrical appliances such as electric razors, and fishing hooks.”
The Zurich newspaper reported that, in total, Washington was lowering tariffs on 77 Chinese products and the Chinese government was reducing duties on 1,619 products from the US. “What initially sounds like a substantial easing of market access is, on closer inspection, nothing more than a drop in the ocean,” the NZZ said.
This, it pointed out, was because the agreed tariff cuts relate to a trade volume of just $60 billion (CHF50 billion) – $30 billion on each side. Last year, however, the total trade volume between the US and China came to $415 billion.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the US would continue to advocate for “fair, balanced and reciprocal trade between the US and China”. Above all, the US is demanding that China purchase significantly more agricultural products from the US.
“All eyes are therefore now on the next meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping,” the NZZ said. The leaders of the world’s two largest economies are expected to meet again for talks at the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November. The G20 summit will take place in Miami in December.
“Xi and Trump could also sit down together there to discuss the outstanding contentious issues,” the NZZ said. “However, a major breakthrough in resolving their differences is hardly on the cards. This was demonstrated by the two summits last week in the US and in May in Beijing. The rapprochement between the two rivals is a painstaking, inch-by-inch process.”
Is the United States facing the same birth rate crisis as Switzerland? This week Swissinfo warned of a slump in birth rates in the US, partly because having children has become too expensive.
Since the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, the number of children per woman in the US has fallen steadily, we reported in an exclusive detailed analysis. “In less than 20 years, the fertility rate dropped from 2.1 to 1.6 children per woman, a historic low.”
This has not escaped the attention of the Trump administration. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a former television doctor, declared in May that the US was “under-babied”.
My colleague Marc Leutenegger, who wrote the article, noted that biological infertility is on the rise in the US, but people who choose not to have children are by far the bigger demographic factor.
An analysis by the Pew Research Center, an independent thinktank in Washington, shows the scale of this phenomenon. The share of women aged 20 to 30 who do not want children rose from 7% in 2002 to 23% in 2023. Among women aged 20 to 24, this figure is even higher at 34%. Men score similarly high numbers.
There are many reasons for this development. “Demographers attribute this trend to a general shift in social values, rising costs of living, limited career prospects for parents, particularly the so-called motherhood penalty, as well as factors like the loneliness crisis and the influence of social media on lifestyle and living standards,” Leutenegger wrote.
“If the US fails to tackle the cost-of-living crisis soon, existing trends could intensify, particularly the growing reluctance to have second or third children, as has happened in Switzerland,” he concluded. “With huge numbers of young women and men already saying no to having children, the US could face the same dilemma as Switzerland: falling below 1.4 children per woman. Demographers consider this a critical threshold for a society.”
The next edition of ‘Swiss views of US news’ will be published on Wednesday, October 7. See you then!
If you have any comments or feedback, email english@swissinfo.ch
More
Subscribe to the newsletter “Swiss views of US news”
Stay informed with our weekly newsletter!
Are you looking for a simple way to stay updated on US-related news from a Swiss perspective?
Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and receive concise summaries of the most important political, financial, and scientific stories in the United States, as reported by Switzerland’s leading media outlets – delivered straight to your inbox.
👉Sign up by entering your email address in the form below!
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
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.