Swiss factory feels tariffs heat

Norbert Steuer, a logistics worker at Swiss precision machinery maker KR Pfiffner, has been at the firm for over three decades. Now he is one of 80 out of 105 staff due to be let go as it reels from US tariffs and a struggling auto industry.

- DAVE GRAHAM

The firm, which makes million-dollar machinery used by carmakers including Mercedes-Benz and suppliers such as Robert Bosch, is at the sharp end of a tough European car market that has been buffeted by US President Donald Trump's trade tariffs and a slowdown in key export market China.

The sector slump has hit carmakers and industrial firms hard in manufacturing strongholds like Germany, where many of Pfiffner’s European customers are. Part of Taiwanese-owned FFG, Pfiffner was already suffering before Trump announced the tariffs in August, which dashed the firm’s US orders.

“It was like a bomb went off,” Mr Steuer, 59, said of Pfiffner’s job cuts announcement, speaking at the company’s base in Utzenstorf, a village in western Switzerland.

Mr Steuer, who is scheduled to be laid off next summer, worries about his future. “There's always talk about workers being sought, but are they going to want to hire a 59-year-old?”