The focus of this paper is the Sino-Swiss Free Trade Agreement. Which is also called the Swiss Chinese Free Trade Agreement (FTA). This paper aims to give a compact overview of the Sino-Swiss FTA. It looks at the impact this FTA has had on the Swiss economy and the Swiss political landscape. Furthermore, it will bring about the unique position and situation Switzerland is in whilst having an FTA with China during a trade war between China and the United States of America.

Switzerland and China signed a bilateral Free Trade Agreement in the summer of 2013. The interest of the different stakeholders was large and the expectations of its impacts were high. This thesis provides a general survey of the very much discussed FTA and a gap analysis, which shows, to what extent the high expectations were met. Afterwards, the development of future requirements will reveal the further improvements that might be applied to enhance the significance of the agreement. Besides a short introduction to free trade theories, the general survey will include information about the free trade strategies of Switzerland and China as well as specific examples of previously concluded FTAs. Also the history and the economic relations between Switzerland and China will be explained. The qualitative gap analysis then shows that the effective impacts of the FTA were below the expectations. Especially difficul- ties with customs procedures in China and the creation of new non-tariff barriers to trade caused bad experiences. Finally, the further improvement of the agreement should particu- larly focus on resolving administrative issues and the inclusion of new content elements.

Recent research by the economics department at the University of St.Gallen (HSG) has found the utilization rates of the Sino-Swiss Free Trade Agreement (SSFTA) to be relatively low on both the Chinese and Swiss side, despite the mammoth amount in tariffs payed that could be saved. In light of this, this thesis focuses on developing a theoretically backed and practically tested survey questionnaire, in both English and Chinese, to measure firm utilization and firm expectations. Based on survey methodology and data collection literature, a survey development framework is established. This framework is then applied to create a questionnaire on the SSFTA. In addition to analysing a myriad of surveys on Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), several internal and external experts on FTAs and survey methodology are consulted, to warrant the legitimacy of the survey questions. The survey link is then sent to several individuals in a preliminary round of pre-tests. The feedback gained from the pre-test is then integrated into the questionnaire. As a result, the Sino-Swiss Competence Centre (SSCC) at HSG has a survey at its disposal, which can be distributed in Switzerland and in China to continue research on this topic.

The first and immediate benefit of the SSFTA are practical opportunities resulting from exporters saving customs duties because of the substantial reductions in tariffs. The FTA created an annual savings potential for Swiss exporting firms worth several hundred million CHF (Ziltener, 2014), and well over 100 million were realized in 2017, on both the Chinese and Swiss sides. These significant amounts are expected to increase in the year 2018 and beyond.

Design of SSFTA Survey based on previous surveys and assessment of stakeholder expectation. The survey is a product of working closely with the HSG SSFTA research team.

At first sight, a free trade agreement (FTA) between Switzerland and the United States seems implausible, but this important new study concludes that an FTA between the two countries would be highly worthwhile to both. As leading advocates of market capitalism, Switzerland and the United States are well situated to conclude an FTA that breaks new ground in dismantling barriers. The study finds that the annual GDP gains to each partner from expanded trade could be on the order of $1.1 billion.