How Swiss Gruyère resisted Trump's tariffs against all odds

US tariffs do not bend Gruyère: in 2025, sales are holding up, despite the forecasts, although a drop of about 15% is below expectations.
"In the end, sales will be lower than the year before, but not as catastrophic as we feared," says Olivier Isler, director of Interprofession du Gruyère (Aop) since a few months, in an interview with La Télé, the regional television of Vaud and Fribourg.
It was Isler himself - speaking to the Guardian last autumn - who predicted a 25% drop in exports to the US, with losses of up to 15 million Swiss francs (over 16 million euros). "The tariffs have a huge impact on the prices that US consumers will have to pay," he had said. "Then there is the aggravating factor of the exchange rate."

Saving the hard cheese appreciated by gourmets all over the world,the excellent performance on the domestic market, which has largely compensated for the collapse in exports to the USA.
Swiss cheese is a cult product defined as 'of systemic export relevance by Swiss producers': approximately 40% of all production - from mild to piquant, from Appenzeller to Tête de Moine - goes abroad: Germany, Italy, the USA, in fact.

In 2024 alone (the second best export year of all time), Switzerland exported 8,774 tonnes of product across the Atlantic, worth CHF 114 million. The Gruyère Aop (32,000 tonnes produced per year, thanks to the work of 1,600 consortium members between Fribourg, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Jura and Berne), covers 50% of this 'stars and stripes' market share, with 4,341 tonnes sold to American consumers, who consider it a top ingredient for stuffing their beloved high-quality sandwiches. With it also the Emmentaler Switzerland Swiss variant and Original Emmentaler Aop (400 tonnes exported overseas).

Figures released in October for the first half year of Gruyère already showed a 15% drop in exports to the US.
In addition to the tariff barriers imposed by US President Donald Trump, there was also the serious problem of the surplus of milk on the Swiss market (around 126,000 tonnes, according to the Interprofession of Milk), which prompted the organisation to announce a price reduction of 4 centimes on the high quality segment. It will take effect on 1 February and will last eleven months (the first time a milk price has been set for almost a year and not quarterly).

The association's first response was to reduce production by 5% to cope with the drop in demand and devise new ways of promoting the product in the US to mitigate the effects of rising prices. A winning move, according to Isler. 'Our stocks are perfectly under control today,' he says.