Published on
16/10/2025 – 11:19 GMT+2
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In the global trade storm unleashed since US President Donald Trump’s return to power, Italian pasta producers are feeling very much alone — while their case is a special one.
On 4 September, the US Department of Commerce announced preliminary tariffs of 91.74% on 13 pasta brands.
If upheld, the tariffs would take effect in January 2026, delivering a significant blow to Italy, which exported nearly €700 million worth of pasta to the United States in 2024.
Admittedly, the case is not new. It originated in 1996, when US pasta producers accused Italian manufacturers of dumping — selling their products in the American market at prices lower than those in Italy.
Since then, Italian producers have been regularly subject to tariffs, but never of the magnitude now decided by the Trump administration.
Combined with the 15% duties that now apply to EU imports into the US, the total tariff burden would reach 106.74% if implemented. The pasta makers say this is brutal.
“It’s unfair, it’s a protectionist action of the US against Italian pasta,” Margherita Mastromauro, president of Unione Italiana Food, the largest association of food producers in Italy, told Euronews.
“We need help, because a large part of our companies are involved. With a duty so high, it means that all these companies will not export until the new review will be done.”
The investigation concerned the period between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024, Italian producers hope the review of the year 2025 will bring them some relief. But for now, the future remains uncertain.
Can the fight become political?
The companies have been scrambling to get these tariffs lifted since September.
Two of them, Garofalo and La Molisana, have taken legal action against the decision.
The Italian government and the European Commission have begun to get involved. However, room for manoeuvre remains limited in what is, according to the president of Unione Italiana Food, more a “legal” than a “political” matter.
The Italian Foreign Ministry has said the duties were “disproportionate” and has joined the case as an “interested party” to weigh in favour of this key sector of Italy’s economy.
On its side, the Commission told Euronews that the issue could be raised within the framework of the new dialogue initiated with the Trump administration on tariffs, since the agreement reached in July ended weeks of discord between the two sides of the Atlantic.
But an EU official also conceded that, unlike the unilateral tariffs imposed on other European products — which violate rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) — the US anti-dumping action against pasta appears to be done traditionally, as a trade defence mechanism allowed by the WTO, which regulates international trade between its member countries.
“We are closely monitoring the case, and if there are flaws in the investigation, we will question it and we will raise the issue with the WTO,” the official told Euronews.
If that were the case, it could lead to retaliatory measures from the EU.
Socialist Italian MEP Brando Benifei, who leads the parliamentary delegation for relations with the US, condemned the US action that he considers “clearly discriminatory”.
“This has to be solved and we urge the Commission to act through,” Benifei told Euronews.