Trump Accounts for babies, national security strategy, and chlorinated chicken

From July all newborns in the United States will receive $1,000. Keystone/swissinfo

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.

Here’s a big question to get things going: is Europe facing “civilizational erasure”? The United States thinks so in its latest National Security Strategy.

Also this week it was announced that, from July, all newborns in the US will receive $1,000. What’s the catch?

And finally, a trip to the “Poultry Capital of the World” to learn about the miserable lives of broiler chickens, which could be heading to Swiss shelves as part of a tariff deal.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2020. Who’s a greater threat to the United States, according to the latest National Security Strategy? Keystone

The priorities in American security policy have ‘fundamentally shifted’ under Donald Trump, according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ): Europe now plays only a ‘problematic supporting role’ for Washington.

The NZZ was reacting to the publication of the US National Security Strategy. The 33-page document “paints a bleak picture of the situation in Europe and is causing tensions in transatlantic relations”, said Swiss public broadcaster SRF on Sunday.

Europe was facing “civilizational erasure”, the US report reckoned. The main problems were “activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence”.

The report was certainly unambiguous. “Washington sees Europe through a contradictory, mistrustful and ethnonationalist lens,” wrote the NZZ. “It’s not the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy that is treated as a threat, but European migration policy.”

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas struck a conciliatory tone, as reported by Swiss public radio RTS. “The US is still our greatest ally,” she stressed. Kallas conceded, however, that some of the criticism was justified, for example that Europe had underestimated its own power vis-à-vis Russia.

The Tages-Anzeiger in Zurich agreed – albeit less diplomatically – saying it was “Europe’s own fault that it has to tolerate Trump’s outrageous insolence”.

“Europe itself is to blame for its vulnerability to blackmail because, despite warnings, it has done too little for its own security. The Europeans must accept provocations in the short term, but at the same time develop a concept for common security and arm themselves,” the paper wrote in an editorial on Sunday.

“The fraternisation between the White House and the Kremlin exposes the continent to the growing danger of being crushed between the US and Russia. That would be precisely the ‘civilizational erasure’ that the White House is predicting for Europeans.”

• The US National Security StrategyExternal link

• NZZ news reportExternal link (German, paywall)

• NZZ analysisExternal link (German, paywall)

• News reportExternal link – SRF (German)

• Tages-Anzeiger editorialExternal link (German)

• Kaja Kallas commentsExternal link – RTS (French)

Children will be able to withdraw from their Trump Accounts when they turn 18. Www.natasha-Lebedinskaya.ru

From July all newborns in the United States will receive $1,000 – to invest. Swiss public broadcaster SRF explains these so-called Trump Accounts.

What are Trump Accounts? They are investment accounts for children that were set up as part of a tax and spending scheme by US President Donald Trump. Under the new law, the Treasury Department will deposit $1,000 (CHF800) into the accounts of children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. The funds must be invested in an index fund that tracks the overall stock market. When the children turn 18, they can withdraw the funds to use for their education, to buy a house or for anything else. The Trump Accounts are also open to children under the age of ten who are already alive. In this case their families should act as investors.

Is there a catch? The US investment in share accounts for children is financed by the Big Beautiful Bill, the major tax programme that Trump pushed through Congress in the summer. “The Big Beautiful Bill includes cuts to social benefits in order to co-finance such programmes,” says SRF stock market correspondent Jens Korte. “This means that money is being taken away from poorer families and they can access it after the child’s 18th birthday. But at the moment, this money is being taken away from them.”

What does Wall Street say? Many banks want to participate, Korte says, adding that this could create the next generation of bank customers. In addition, the accounts will probably cost fees and the money will have to be invested in funds. “Accordingly, Wall Street will almost automatically receive more money via the Trump Accounts,” he says.

Who benefits from the Trump Accounts? According to Korte, it is also a tax savings programme. And it’s clear who benefits from such programmes: richer people. “This programme won’t narrow the income and wealth gap, but potentially widen it,” he says.

• ‘Trump accounts aim to turn children into investors’External link – SRF explainer (German)

Americans consumed 47kg of chicken per capita in 2024 – almost twice as much as 40 years ago. Keystone

While the tariff deal with the US resulted in alarmed Swiss headlines about chlorinated chicken, it turns out that chlorine is rarely used nowadays. But fattening billions of animals has plenty of other problems. A report from the “Poultry Capital of the World”.

Sarah, a young waitress in a bar in Gainesville, Georgia, assured the US correspondent for the Tages-Anzeiger that the chicken wings didn’t taste of chlorine. “And if they did, you wouldn’t notice it thanks to the spices.” In an article published on Monday, the journalist, Charlotte Walser, explained how thousands of people flock to Gainesville every spring for the big Chicken Festival.

The Swiss, however, have no appetite for wings from Gainesville. According to a survey published in Blick last month, more than four out of five respondents said they wouldn’t buy American poultry.

Walser tried to get a look inside the chicken farms around Gainesville – huge halls in which tens of thousands of chickens are fattened – but they’re not open to the public. Instead, visitors can find out how the chicken industry works, from egg to slaughter, at the Georgia Poultry Laboratory Network.

“Chlorinated chicken?” Doug Waltman, an expert on salmonella in the lab, smiled. “That was a discussion here – 20 years ago.” Today, chlorine is used in less than 5% of production, according to the National Chicken Council. Other substances are used, primarily peroxyacetic acid (also known as peracid), a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. The aim is to reduce intestinal bacteria that get onto the meat during slaughter, but also salmonella. The industry association denies that this compensates for a lack of hygiene.

Last year 9.4 billion broiler chickens were slaughtered in the US. Americans consumed 47kg of chicken per capita in 2024 – almost twice as much as 40 years ago. Waltman said the industry is increasingly efficient owing to breeding practices: in 1925 a broiler chicken lived for 112 days and weighed just over 1kg at slaughter; today, they are killed after just 47 days, weighing almost 3kg. Animal welfare organisations speak of “torture breeding”, which leads to lameness, cardiovascular diseases and breast muscle defects.

From the point of view of Swiss Animal Protection (STS), the main problem with US chickens is therefore not the chemical treatment after slaughter, but the combination of this torture breeding, high density in the barn and a lack of animal-friendly infrastructure. Walser acknowledged that all of this also affects chickens in Europe and Switzerland but, according to the STS, they are better off compared to US chickens.

“You want to see chickens? Go to the motorway,” Sarah, the waitress, told Walser. “You’ll see the chicken trucks there.” But it’s a pretty sad sight, she warned. “You think about becoming a vegetarian when you see them.”

• ‘Chlorinated chicken? That was 20 years ago’External link – Tages-Anzeiger reportage from Gainesville (German, paywall)

• Survey on eating US meatExternal link – Blick (German)

The next edition of ‘Swiss views of US news’ will be published on Wednesday, December 17. See you then!

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