Waiting for the list of products to be made official by the duties that will start on August 7, according to an estimate of the CGIA, the application of the rate to 15% should cause Italy to Italy, at least in the short term, between 14 and 15 billion euros per year.
An amount that, in principle, corresponds to the cost to create the bridge over the Strait of Messina. A damage, that caused by the US protectionist policies, which, according to the CGIA, contains both direct effects (missed exports), and indirect ones (decline in profit margin of companies that will continue to sell in the US market, cost of income support measures of Italian employees who will lose their jobs, transfer of companies or part of the productions in the USA, Trade Diversion).
In addition to these two cases, the conjunctural one (linked to the devaluation of the dollar against the euro. Although in 2024 compared to 2023 there was a contraction of sales to the USA of 3.6% (equal to -2.4 billion euros), Italy has a strong vocation for exports to the USA (in 2024 in 2024 the economic dimension was 64.7 billion), was also taken into consideration.
However, the effects of the duties at 15%, will have to “measure themselves” even with various questions: the US consumers and companies will replace the Italian final and intermediate assets with the indigenous ones or other countries, or will they continue to buy Made in Italy products?. With the new customs barriers, will the Italian export companies be able to not increase the sales prices, giving up part of the profit margins? These are questions that it is not easy at all to give answers.
However, the Bank of Italy recalls that 43% of our exports in the US is made up of high quality products and another 49% of medium quality. Regarding the second question, however, researchers in via Nazionale report that the decline in the US demand linked to the increase in the prices of the final products could be absorbed by our companies through a contraction of the profit margins. Italian companies that export in the US have a “only” incidence of sales in this market of 5.5% of total turnover, while the gross operating margin is on average of 10% of revenues and therefore a possible “closure” of this market would affect relatively.