A gold Rolex desk clock and a $130,000 engraved gold bar given to Donald Trump by a group of Swiss billionaires have raised questions in Europe and the US about the personalisation of US presidential power.
Pasquale Tridico, an Italian MEP and the former head of the country’s national institute for social security said he was “disgusted” by the golden charm offensive, made weeks before Trump decided to slash 39% tariffs on Swiss imports to 15%.
“This is really awful,” he said, claiming that it seemed to be a case of “making foreign policy the policy of individuals”.
Lisa Mazzone, the president of the Green party in Switzerland said the gifts appeared to show Trump’s “corrupt logic had poisoned the Swiss elite”.
“It is unacceptable that the federal council is relying on the help of an economic elite that represents private interests and lacks democratic legitimacy in its negotiations with the US president,” she added.
The gifts were lavished on Trump in the first week of November but might have gone unnoticed until internet sleuths set out to establish the origins of a new clock photographed on Trump’s Oval Office desk.
They suggested the clock was in the style of Datejust, a self-winding wrist watch launched in 1945, now a valuable collector’s item.
The “fluted, gold coloured bezel, a green dial, and a cyclops to magnify a date complication” said the watch website Hodinkee. “To the best of our knowledge, [it] is not a commercially available product.”
They tracked the gift back to photos of a delegation of seven men from Switzerland in the first week of November. Among them were Jean-Frédéric Dufour, the head of Rolex, who described the clock in a letter to the president as a “a modest, refined expression of traditional Swiss watchmaking”.
The gold bar, emblazoned with the numbers 45 and 47 to honour Trump’s first and second presidency were given by Marwan Shakarchi, the head of the Swiss gold refining company MKS. One photo showed the word “president” engraved down the glistening spine, but it is unclear if this was the same ingot.
The Swiss publicist and political commentator Hannes Britschgi told the Swiss radio station bz Basel that the gifts were “undignified”, while the deputy editor-in-chief of CH Media, Doris Kleck, said it was a reflection of how Switzerland had to kowtow to Trump to get his attention.
“Trump loves being fawned over by billionaires. It’s terrible that one has to shower the US president with gold to get Switzerland back on his agenda,” she told the same radio show.
The Swiss economy minister, Guy Parmelin, rejected criticism of the lobbying, telling the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper: “We haven’t sold our soul to the devil.” Parmelin said Trump’s decision to reduce the punitive 39% tariffs on Swiss imports to 15%, in line with the EU, was a “great relief”.
A White House spokesperson denied any link between the gifts and the deal, saying “the only special interest guiding President Trump’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people”, and the tariff deal followed a pledge by Switzerland of “$200bn to make and hire in America”.
An official said the White House accepted thousands of gifts that went into the National Archives but they could be displayed during a president’s term in the presidential library or museum.
They added that presidents might decide to personally retain or buy some of the gifts received but they could be taxed.