(Reuters) -Switzerland remains committed to buying Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighter jets from the United States despite an unclear total cost of procurement in part due to the impact of U.S. tariffs, the government said on Wednesday.
The Swiss government reaffirmed its commitment to buying the jets a week after the United States imposed some of its highest tariff rates worldwide on Switzerland due to the size of the U.S. trade deficit with the European country.
The price of the jets would ultimately depend on inflation in the United States, global commodity prices “and other factors such as price increases due to the tariffs imposed by the USA worldwide,” the government said in a statement.
Bern chose the F-35A as its next-generation fighter plane in 2021 for what it considered a fixed price of around 6 billion Swiss francs ($7.47 billion) for 36 jets. The U.S. has since said that sum was a misunderstanding.
Talks with the United States to avert the total sum from potentially increasing by $650 million to $1.3 billion showed it was impossible for Switzerland to assert a fixed price, the Swiss government said.
($1 = 0.8028 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by Ariane Luthi)
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