An extra month to seek an agreement on tariffs. Fortunately, US President Donald Trump has postponed to June XNUMX the final decision on import duties for aluminum and steel from the European Union, Mexico and Canada, which should have come into effect today, May XNUMXst. It is not excluded that Trump's very recent talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have led him to greater caution. “But – the EU immediately specified – we will not negotiate under threat and the agreement must be balanced and mutually beneficial”.
In the absence of agreements, Italy would risk a lot in the trade war. LItaly does not produce aluminum (waiting for relaunch of the former Alcoa factory in Sardinia), while as far as steel is concerned, it is not among the very first European exporters to the USA (it is only the fifth): to risk most of all in this sense will be Germany, which diverts almost a million tons of finished products overseas in steel, with the Netherlands in second place with 632 tonnes. In any case, Italy exports more than a country like France, and in any case another danger is the indirect risks: that is, that the companies of the countries most affected by the duties will move exports towards destinations that have remained accessible, thus doing in some competition also to Italian companies.
Another indirect consequence, no less worrying: the European steel companies, which inevitably they will export less to the US and therefore perhaps less in absolute terms, they will cut the intermediate goods that they often and willingly buy from Italian suppliers. And the case wants it to be precisely the German steel industry, the most exposed to the North American market, the first to buy intermediate goods made in Italy. Nor can we exclude the risk of further duties, in a hypothetical spiral of retaliation and counter-retaliation: the made in Italy exports all over the States, according to Unimpresa data, goods for 37 billion euros, with industrial machinery in the lead but also cars (perhaps Trump's next protectionist target), the ship-train-aircraft sector and the agri-food sector. Meanwhile, the White House has already reached agreements in principle with Argentina, Australia and Brazil
