{"id":1529,"date":"2026-02-11T22:43:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T22:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/1529\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T22:43:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T22:43:06","slug":"trump-makes-embarrassing-blunder-after-sending-a-warning-threat-to-switzerland-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/1529\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump makes ’embarrassing’ blunder after sending a warning threat to Switzerland | World | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump<\/a> said he “really didn’t like” the way the Swiss leader Karin Keller-Sutter talked to him in a phone call the two held last year. Trump raised tariffs on Swiss imports<\/a> by 9% following a tense phone call with Keller-Sutter, who he mistakenly referred to as Switzerland’s Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

In reality, she is a member of the Swiss Federal Council. Switzerland also does not have a prime minister but a president, who is a man. The current president is Guy Parmelin, since January 2026. Frustrated by what he described as the Swiss leader’s tone<\/a>, Trump said he decided to raise the tariff to 39%.<\/p>\n

In a Fox Business interview, he said: “I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low. Then I got an emergency call from, I believe, the Prime Minister of Switzerland, and she was very aggressive but nice but very aggressive. She said, ‘Sir, we are a small country. We can’t do this. We can’t do this.’ I couldn’t get her off the phone.”<\/p>\n

He added: “You may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you.”<\/p>\n

The furious president went on: “You know, I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland<\/a>. They were paying no tariffs when sending stuff over here – like nobody could believe it – and we had a $42 billion deficit. We weren’t taking anything, and I said, ‘We have to do something, because we have to even that up a little bit.’ I didn’t have to get anything all at once, so I put on a 30% tariff, which was too low. Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was half the deficit.<\/p>\n

“You know Switzerland, you think of it as ultra-chic, ultra-perfect. They are not. They are only that because we allow them to rip us off and make all this money.”<\/p>\n

“I guess the Prime Minister, I don’t know, the President, the Prime Minister called, a woman. And she was very repetitive. She said, ‘No, no, no, you can’t do that, 30%. We are a small, small country.’ But I said, ‘You may be small, but you have a big deficit,'” Trump said.<\/p>\n

Following the heated phone call, despite Trump’s rhetoric, the US and Swiss negotiators eventually struck a deal in November to lower the tariff to 15%, with Swiss firms committing $200 billion in investments in the US by 2028.<\/p>\n

Switzerland does not have a prime minister. Instead, the country is governed collectively by a seven-member Federal Council. Its current president is Guy Parmelin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump said he “really didn’t like” the way the Swiss leader Karin Keller-Sutter talked to him in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1964,18,21,17,112,1963],"class_list":{"0":"post-1529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-davos","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-karin-keller-sutter","11":"tag-switzerland","12":"tag-tariffs","13":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}