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Joe Biden or Donald Trump: On November 3, Americans will decide who will rule their country for the next four years. It doesn’t matter how you turn and turn: American policy decisions have a great influence on Switzerland and its companies. But which president would be best for the Swiss economy? And when will the free trade agreement with the United States that the Federal Council aspires to take shape?
From an economic point of view, a Biden president would be better for Switzerland, said SGKB investment expert Caroline Hilb in an interview with the AWP news agency.
Unlike Trump, Biden tends to take a multilateral rather than a bilateral trade approach. Therefore, the World Trade Organization would likely be strengthened again under Biden, from which Switzerland could benefit.
Trump, in turn, could, if successful, extend his aggressive trade policy from China to Europe. “The export-oriented Swiss economy is particularly susceptible to this in the current weak economic environment,” Hilb said.
The United States “has to” know about the crown crisis
Above all, the next US president will face the challenge of causing the economy to reel from the crown pandemic. For Jan Atteslander of the Economiesuisse trade association, the central question is not about the next president, but about how quickly the United States can learn of the current crisis in the crown.
“The influence of the US economy in Switzerland is very great and, as an exporting nation, we are also feeling the drop in gross domestic product in the US,” said the Economiesuisse expert in an interview with AWP.
Both Biden and Trump would try to generate economic momentum with an expansionary fiscal policy, summarizes the DZ Bank in their analysis. In both cases, this means low interest rates for a long time.
But Biden and Trump differ in their approach to jump-starting the American economy. Trump is synonymous with tax cuts, Biden with high public spending.
More of the same?
The measures that the future president of the United States may implement also depend, in particular, on the outcome of the congressional elections held in parallel. Major reforms can only be implemented with the support of both houses of Congress.
CS economist Nannette Hechler-Fayd’herbe sees a President Biden with a “divided” Congress as the most likely outcome of the elections. So with a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and a Republican majority in the Senate.
A continuation of the lockdown policy is becoming apparent in Washington and Biden, like his predecessor, would have to rely heavily on presidential ordinances.
