Italian cheesemakers stockpile in US over fear of Trump tariffs

Italian makers of Parmesan cheese, olive oil and other delicacies are racing to ship their wares to the US before president-elect Donald Trump can make good on his threat to impose new tariffs on imports.  

The US imported €4.4bn worth of Italian food, wine and spirits in 2023, but producers in Italy fear American appetite for their products will be curbed by the price hikes that would likely follow any new levies.

“Everybody is rushing, putting as much food in their warehouses as they can before [Trump] gets in,” said Michele Buccelletti, whose family business produces olive oil and wine in Tuscany and Umbria.

However, such efforts are constrained by a shortage of cargo space in the run-up to Christmas. “Right now, it’s impossible to find a 20-foot or 40-foot refrigerated container,” Buccelletti said.

Buccelletti said he usually sends 20,000-30,000 litres of extra virgin olive oil to the US two or three times a year. But since Trump’s victory, his US importer has been pressing him to increase shipments quickly, and he now aims to have 50,000 litres en route this month.

Filippo Marchi, general manager of Granarolo — a Bologna-based dairy, said the company is scrambling to dispatch more Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano cheese to its own US subsidiary.

However, Marchi expressed concern that production “bottlenecks” — in terms of long maturation time for the cheeses — and scarce shipping capacity posed serious constraints. “It is not possible to produce a lot in a short period,” he said.

“Until December, it is quite difficult to find extra cargo space,” Marchi said. “Everyone is trying to do the same thing.”

Granarolo is looking to secure additional warehouse space to hold the extra stock by late February, when it expects tariffs could be imposed. Yet Marchi still hopes Trump may reconsider his tariff plan, especially on food.

“You have to think about the availability of products on supermarket shelves,” he said.

Luigi Pio Scordamaglia, director of international affairs at Coldiretti — Italy’s influential farming association, said some stockpiling may have begun even before Trump’s win, as producers were hedging for this outcome.

Italy’s food and wine exports to the US were 19.5 per cent higher in the first half of 2024 than over the same period last year. In total, Italian agrifood exports to the US — Rome’s most important market outside Europe — are forecast to reach €7.8bn for the year. 

Though Scordamaglia said new tariffs are expected to dampen future growth, he expects the market to remain solid given “strong demand for Italian food in the US”.

Some Italians hope Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — who has forged a strong friendship with Elon Musk, Trump’s powerful backer and nominee to head a deregulation department — may be able to secure favourable treatment for Italy.

Foreign minister Antonio Tajani said this month that Trump had shown a “special regard for Italy, different from other countries” in his first term, which could help shield the country from the tariff blow.

However, Meloni admitted this week that “we are all worried about tariffs — this is a fact”. She said that her government would engage in talks with the Trump administration while also seeking to boost Europe’s competitiveness.

During his first term, Trump levied 25 per cent import duties on various European goods, including French wines and Italian cheese, as punishment for European subsidies to aerospace giant Airbus.

Though Italian wines were spared from direct tariffs, Albiera Antinori, president of winemaker Marchesi Antinori, said wineries suffered anyway as US wine traders hiked prices all around. “It damaged the whole sector,” she said. “It unsettles the consumer and it unsettles the supply chain.”

Not all Italian winemakers were rushing to front-load exports, she said, given large volumes of red wine already in the US. “Each one is going to be looking at their own stocks and their own availability of wine,” Antinori said.

Francesco Mutti, chief executive of Mutti — the biggest Italian tomato products maker in the US market, also warned that front-loading exports can be risky, given the cost of capital and extra storage, which may not pay off if Trump’s tariff threat doesn’t materialise — or if rates end up lower than predicted.

Massimiliano Giansanti, president of Confagricoltura — which represents Italy’s largest agribusinesses, said any export surge would likely be followed by a slowdown. Many producers also fear that if the prices of authentic Italian products rise, some American consumers will switch to cheaper domestic substitutes.

“The big risk of duties is that fake products restart on the market: Italian-sounding, not Italian, he said. “Some American consumers are going to choose the products that cost less.”