Swiss chocolate makers face a bittersweet Easter season, grappling with soaring cacao prices and new US import tariffs.
The Trump administration's recently announced tariffs have sent shockwaves through Swiss industries, from chocolate to watches, though many are adopting a wait-and-see approach.
At Geneva's Festichoc chocolate festival, the new tariffs were a topic of discussion, but the overall mood remained positive.
Julie Jammes, marketing manager for Canonica, a Geneva chocolatier with three San Francisco stores, said, "We’re waiting a little longer, but it’s clearly a shock for us."
Canonica has yet to decide on a course of action.
The Swiss government is also taking a cautious approach, despite the 31 per cent tariffs imposed on Swiss goods – significantly higher than the 20 per cent levied on EU exports.
The government has expressed concern about the potential impact on key Swiss industries, including chocolate, watches, cheese, and coffee capsules. The coming months will reveal how these tariffs will ultimately impact Swiss businesses and their relationship with the US market.
“An increase in trade tensions is not in Switzerland’s interests. Countermeasures against US tariff increases would entail costs for the Swiss economy, in particular by making imports from the USA more expensive,” the government said last week, adding that the executive branch “is therefore not planning to impose any countermeasures at the present time”.
The government said Swiss exports to the United States on Saturday were subject to an additional 10 per cent tariff, and another 21 per cent beginning Wednesday.
The United States is Switzerland’s second-biggest trading partner after the EU – a 27-member-country bloc that nearly surrounds the wealthy Alpine country of more than 9 million – and US-Swiss trade in goods and services has quadrupled over the last two decades, the government said.
The Swiss government said Switzerland abolished all industrial tariffs on January 1, 2024, meaning that 99 per cent of all goods from the United States can be imported into Switzerland duty-free.
The atmosphere remained bubbly at Festichoc, where eager shoppers nibbled chocolate squares and ogled at chocolate Easter bunny and egg sculptures at the annual gathering in the Geneva town of Versoix.
Ms Jammes expressed hope that the “loyal clientele” in the United States would remain faithful, but she said “I put myself in the consumer’s shoes” and realised a pocketbook pinch might dissuade many shoppers.
“I don’t see why I would pay $45 tomorrow for a box (of chocolates) that I’d pay $30 for today,” she said Saturday. “It’s still a very complicated issue.”
The Swiss chocolate industry association Chocosuisse has expressed its disappointment over the Trump tariffs, even though it can still count on the domestic market: The Swiss are among the world's top consumers of chocolate, scarfing down more than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) per year.
“It is completely incomprehensible that Switzerland is targeted by these tariffs,” Chocosuisse said, adding that it was taking the situation “very seriously” and decried how the US measure “hits our businesses hard and represents a heavy burden that will weigh on exports to the United States”.
Philippe Pascoet, a chocolatier from Geneva, lamented a sharp increase in cocoa prices over the last six months, and said the U.S. market has always been tricky for smaller producers.
“Trump now has wanted to impose taxes on imported products. But it has always been complicated to send chocolate to the United States, just for sanitary reasons," he said.
“They want to control what is imported into their country. So even people who used to order chocolate from us online often found it blocked at customs.”
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