This year's World Economic Forum in Davos saw a resurgence of U.S. participants. In the past, Amercians have been a rare breed in the Swiss mountains. But this year, Davos welcomed a large U.S. delegation led by former President Bill Clinton, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. The atmosphere around various Swiss-U.S. discussions was relaxed and positive. And yours truly had the pleasure of being introduced to Bill Clinton and to stick a Swiss-American Friendship Pin on Senator John Kerry's (Presidential candidate 2004) lapel.

It is not just the atmosphere at the WEF that led to optimism.  The Swiss-U.S. trade figures for 2010 look very strong, indeed.  Swiss exports to the U.S. increased just over 10% and reached CHF 19.5 billion, the same record level reached before the crisis.  Measured in U.S. Dollars, 2010 would set a clear new record level.  With this result, the U.S. has solidified its position as second largest export market behind Germany (growth in 2010: +6.5%), but way ahead of Italy (growth: +.6%) and France (growth -.6%). The early numbers for U.S. exports to Switzerland, as well as for bilateral foreign direct investments show a very positive trend.  In spite of the many doom prophecies regarding Swiss-U.S. business in the aftermath of the UBS affair and with a difficult exchange rate development, the Swiss-U.S. business relationships are very healthy.

Now, every relationship has its question marks and its difficult moments. While the bilateral issues have mostly been resolved through last year's ratification of the Swiss-U.S. treaty, there are many issues that hinder the development between the two countries. These issues are all of multilateral character, defining the relationship of the U.S. with all its trading partners.  But Switzerland, as the only small country in the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) that is not part of a larger group and that is over proportionally linked to the U.S. economy, will always be more exposed to such developments.  Issues currently on the radar screen are first and foremost, FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; see Swiss Business Jan/Feb 2011). Other issues include growing protectionism in the U.S., increased complexity to transact business with U.S. companies, especially for small and medium-sized companies, and overly complex reporting mechanisms.  Some key causes of these developments are things like the Neal Bill, the Additional Reporting Requirement Act, the Health Care Reform Act, and many others.  All these acts have worthy goals, but many of them will have severe secondary effects insufficiently considered in the rush to correct certain problems arising from the crisis.  The most important secondary effects will be very much to the detriment of the U.S. economy with some banks already significantly reducing their own and their clients' investment in the U.S. 

As a close and faithful friend and business partner, we would like to call on the U.S. to have a close look at the extraterritorial secondary effects of its legislation.  And we dearly hope that the U.S. will again take up the leadership of the free trade movement in the Doha Round negotiations.  Maybe in January 2012, we will hear President Obama speak again about the U.S. as the leader of free global markets, a sentence we were searching for in vain during the State of the Union speech in 2011.  With this, the springtime development between our two countries need not only last a spring, but rather a very long time.