Ceramic alarm. Ciarrocchi: 'Europe revises the Ets rule'
With tariffs at 30%, the impact on the ceramics sector, which exports more than 700 million euro worth of product to the US, will be very heavy.
2' min read
2' min read
N nobody expected tariffs at 30%. Even 10% would have had a heavy effect, but with such a figure 'you take away the possibility for Italian industry to export to the US. And for us it is an enormous damage, because the United States is the first foreign market for the ceramic industry, with a value of over 700 million euro in 2024, about 14-15% of total turnover'.
The President of Confindustria Ceramica, Augusto Ciarrocchi, comments on Trump's decision to impose 30% tariffs on EU products entering the US. Last April, during Coverings, the trade fair organised in the United States by the association itself, the subject of tariffs had been at the forefront and the threat (then) of 20% was already considered unsustainable: with 30% we are beyond any possible prediction.
Italians affected more than competitors
."Moreover, since it is a value-based tariffs, this is particularly damaging to Italian producers, because the average price of our tiles is already double that of our competitors, including the Spanish," adds Ciarrocchi. "Not to mention that the tariffs are in addition to the devaluation of the dollar, which has now exceeded 12% since the beginning of the year. In fact, being consumer goods, Italian tiles and sanitary ware (which together generate a production value of about EUR 7.5 billion, with exports accounting for 80%) will also suffer the repercussions of the loss of the purchasing value of US citizens themselves.
The viable alternatives
.Nor does it seem to be a solution to transfer part of the production to the USA as, since the 1980s, some large Italian ceramics companies have done, with huge investments, and today account for about one third of local production, which however barely covers half of national needs.
"It is a market that is structurally in deficit, which has to import," the president observes, "so there is no doubt that these tariffs will fall on American consumers, but they will also affect our companies that produce there, because in part they also have to export from Italy. In addition, it will cost more to buy technology, which also comes from Italy'.
