By Antonella Cinelli and Valentina Consiglio
ROME, April 14 (Reuters) - Italy was the only major EU country whose exports to the United States grew last year despite Donald Trump's tariffs. The result was hailed by Rome's government, but a closer look at the data shows one-off factors at play and little underlying resilience.
With an increasing share of Italy's manufacturing exports going to the United States in the last 15 years, that is bad news for the euro zone's third-largest economy, whose already
weak growth is now threatened by surging energy costs.
"Italian expertise is stronger than tariffs," Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told parliament last month after national statistics bureau ISTAT reported a 7.2% year-on-year rise in U.S. sales.
However, detailed numbers from ISTAT and employers' lobby Confindustria show almost the entire increase was driven by pharmaceutical shipments front-loaded ahead of the import duty hikes.
PHARMA AND ONE-OFFS DISTORT PICTURE
Stripping out the 54.1% increase in pharmaceuticals, Italy's exports to the U.S. fell by 1.6%, Confindustria calculated in a March 26 report.
Removing also exceptional orders for ships and other large transport items, the decline widens to 5.7% - a sign the country's apparent export momentum to the U.S. may be not only illusory but also nearing a turning point.
"Italy's trade with the U.S. seems to be in good shape, but when looking at the details, the overall picture is far from positive," said Mauro Gallegati, professor of Economics at Marche Polytechnic University.
Moreover, the 15% "reciprocal" tariff agreement agreed by Trump and the European Union only came into effect in August last year, meaning its main impact has yet to be felt.
Out of 22 manufacturing sectors measured by ISTAT, 16 saw a decline in U.S. purchases last year, several posting double-digit falls.
Italy is more exposed to non-EU markets than its peers, with 48.2% of its exports headed outside the bloc last year and the U.S. alone absorbing 10.8%, or some 70 billion euros ($82 billion).
The share headed to the U.S. has been increasing steadily for the last 15 years, ISTAT data shows.
Confindustria said in its report that, assuming the current U.S. tariff structure remains in place, the losses for Italian exports could exceed 16 billion euros ($18.7 billion) per year in the medium term, compared with a tariff-free scenario.
Its report did not estimate the impact on the labour market, but while talks between Trump and the EU were still ongoing in mid-2025, the group's president Emanuele Orsini warned that even a lower tariff of 10% could cost Italy 118,000 jobs this year. L8N3SZ0G5
Underlining Rome's fragility is the fact that its pharma output, the main export to the U.S., is largely owned by U.S. and other foreign firms that outsource manufacturing to Italy due to its relatively low wage costs and expertise.
"This makes pharmaceuticals highly vulnerable to future, possibly sector-specific, tariff hikes by Trump which could act as an incentive for the companies to reshore," said Marco Leonardi, economics professor at Milan's Statale University.
DIVERSIFY FOR EXPORT RESILIENCE
Despite Italy's sluggish economic growth nL8N40D0ZR - consistently less than 1% per year - outside the U.S. its exports are holding up relatively well, Confindustria and ISTAT said.
Overall, exports to the rest of the world rose 3.3% in 2025 in value terms and 0.7% in volume terms, not affected by price rises.
According to Barbara Cimmino, vice president of Confindustria, in the face of Trump's import duties Italian companies "should focus on market diversification," targeting areas such as South America, Mexico, Indonesia and India.
Yet even diversifying does not offer full tariff protection, said Massimo Podda, the sales director at Cantina Santadi, a winemaking cooperative on the Italian island of Sardinia.
"We have always taken care to balance out exposure across various markets," he said.
"But the tariffs have ended up causing problems for us too, because many companies that were heavily reliant on the U.S. market have had to become much more aggressive in markets where they previously had a smaller presence."
The United States remains an irreplaceable market for many Italian entrepreneurs, such as Riccardo Cavanna, whose family-run packaging machinery business in the northern Piedmont region sees up to 15% of its exports go to U.S. customers.
Cavanna said bearing in mind that "tariffs is the new normal," he had increased his personal trips to customers to defend his market share.
"It's not really the time for remote working: You need to have your suitcase packed, because you have to go out and find clients and projects," he said.
($1 = 0.8540 euros)
(Additional reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, editing by Gavin Jones and Hugh Lawson)
