Following up on a Feb. 6 rally of Italian food importers at his Gran Caffe’ l’Aquila in Philadelphia, Riccardo Longo says he’s delighted by last weekend’s statement from Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio that the U.S. has decided not to expand import taxes.
Since last year those tariffs have added 25 percent to the price of genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, Scotch whiskey, Spanish olives and French wine.
The U.S. had threatened to raise those taxes and also expand them to include Italian wine, prosciutto as well as other Italian hams, crostini and more. But the Italians say the Americans have now agreed to back off.
“Great news,” Longo said in an email. “We were all holding our breath for the Feb. 18 deadline.”
He sent articles in English and Italian confirming DiMaio’s statements, elaborated by other officials in Italy’s coalition government. “For now they have decided not to raise tariffs, although the 25 percent tax on parmigiano remains.”
Italian officials visited Washington for high-level meetings last month. And Italian exporters and Italian American importers had packed President Donald Trump’s National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 6 and other recent events in a show of force to get the administration to back off, former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., Italy’s former congressman for North America Amato Berardi, and other advisers to the industry said at the meeting.
Barletta, chairman of the 450-company American Italian Food Coalition, said in a statement that “President Trump and his team made the right decision,” and have sent “a positive message to Italian-American communities in states across America, like Pennsylvania, that the Trump Administration understands they are a critical part of the fabric of our nation.”
“Italy today emerges undamaged from the revision of the list of products subjected to tariffs imposed by the U.S.” last fall, Foreign Minister Di Maio said in his statement Saturday.
Italy had appealed to the U.S. not to punish the nation — though the U.S. had permission from the World Trade Organization to do so. The tariffs would have hit as part of broad U.S. sanctions against European Union countries for their support of Airbus against Boeing. Airbus has major plants in France and Germany, as well as the U.K., China and Alabama.
The Trump administration said Friday it will raise the tariff rate on aircraft coming from the European Union to 15 percent from 10 percent on March 18.
“We’re doing everything possible to limit the impact on Italy, but the Americans have the upper hand,” Di Maio aide Ivan Scalfarotto told Bloomberg News. “Italy isn’t part of the Airbus consortium, and tariffs will have a cost for American companies, restaurants, families.”
The importers and their lobbyists depict the fight as a struggle between independent-minded family businesses and big governments using them as pawns in an unrelated fight.
But Italian American consumers have their own brand of independence. As reader Robert Capretto responded to an earlier story in an email about the threat consumers will turn to “fake prosciutto” from Latin America or Asia if Italian costs too much: “Don’t believe it. We Italians know fake from real. If they tick us off, we can make our own.”
