Swiss economy shrinks significantly in third quarter
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Swiss economy shrinks significantly in third quarter
As expected, US President Donald Trump's tariff blow against Switzerland left its mark on the local economy in the third quarter.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
Gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 0.5% in the third quarter on an adjusted basis compared to the previous quarter. On Friday, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) confirmed the flash estimate published a fortnight ago.
The chemical-pharmaceutical industry in particular recorded a significant decline of 7.9% between July and September, according to the report.
+ Swiss politicians decry ‘gold bar diplomacy’ in Trump trade deal
At the same time, SECO says the development in the sector should be seen against the backdrop of pull-forward effects in the previous quarters. In anticipation of US tariffs, inventories were heavily stockpiled; exports shot up accordingly.
Exports from the chemical-pharmaceutical industry make up the lion’s share of Swiss exports: in 2024, for example, they accounted for 52%.
The slowdown in the Swiss economy is thus continuing at an accelerated pace. Growth had already shrunk to 0.2% in the second quarter, after an increase of 0.8% in the first quarter of the year.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
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
External Content
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.