In July, U.S. watch imports from Switzerland rebounded big time.
Previously down 46.4 percent year-over-year in June, the amount of Swiss timepieces welcomed into America increased by 12 percent in July compared to 2024, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Over $175 million worth of Swiss exports entered the U.S. in July, compared to around $157 million at the same time last year, the data says. And when compared to the $85 million imported in June, July’s numbers show a 107% increase in imports, month over month.
The United States’s Swiss watch imports have yo-yoed throughout 2025. May saw a similar decline as June, with Swiss watch imports dropping by 58.4 percent compared to 2024’s figure. The beginning of the year fared better, with January recording a 37.7 percent increase year-over-year. February saw a slight decline, by 10.2 percent, and March had a slight uptick of 5.3 percent. Overall, Swiss watches arriving on U.S. soil is up 7.6 percent year-over-year through the month of July.
The standout figure of the year, though, is April’s massive surge. In that month, the U.S. saw its Swiss watch imports skyrocket by a whopping 149 percent year-over-year—worth about $851.9 million, or about a fifth of 2024’s total Swiss watch exports heading stateside. The drastic hike (and the massive wave of watch shipments) was directly associated with a response to President Trump’s tariffs and not a sign of increased demand, Jean-Philippe Bertschy, an analyst at investment firm Vontobel, told Bloomberg at the time.
Previously, Trump had announced both a 10 percent tax and a 31 percent levy on Swiss exports. Now, that figure has soared to 39 percent, one of the largest U.S. levies in the world and a number that sent the Swiss watch industry into crisis mode. The tax went into effect on August 7, a deadline that may very well be the reason for July’s increase in imports as watch companies looked to get products to the U.S. ahead of the levies, with some even shipping more items in bulk. Plenty of timepiece brands increased their prices, too, in response to those initial tariff figures back in April, according to Hodinkee.
Of course, it remains to be seen how the official implementation of the 39 percent levy will affect the U.S. importation of Swiss watches. One watch industry expert predicts that the Swiss may skip the American market totally: “Being that allocations and supplies are decided by the brands themselves, if the U.S. is not in a position to sell more goods, they could sell the goods in other countries, and either increase or decrease allocations,” Steven Holtzman, vice chairman at CD Peacock in Chicago, told Robb Report last month.
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