Clouds over 2026, manufacturing ahead slowly: exports, cars and Germany the unknowns

A progress of just 0.9% at constant prices, after a drop of four decimals last year, which sees a braking across the board with the exception of the FMCG and ICT areas. Cerved's forecasts on the trend of national manufacturing revenues leave no room for great optimism and are in line with the overall intonation of the various research institutes, which once again point to 'zero point' as the possible progress.

A rebound that will not take place - Cerved data show - except for specific individual sectors, such as metal carpentry or engineering works, revived by the last year's NRP grounding, while the majority of sectors will float with progress in the order of one percentage point.

Dragging down the average, as was the case in 2025, will once again be the fashion system, which is seen declining in terms of revenues by 2.5%, after last year's -6.6%. On the sector - analysts explain - weigh the difficulties on the domestic and international markets, with the spread of e-commerce platforms taking away growing shares of demand. Even luxury companies and companies with a strong export vocation could be affected by a drop in consumption, especially in Europe and the Far East. Not dissimilar are the hypotheses of Prometeia and Intesa Sanpaolo, which for the industry see a 2026 characterised by the recovery of one point at constant prices, a gain in current values of 2.2% (for Cerved the equivalent figure is +2.5%), i.e. 25 billion more, reaching 1440 billion. Close to the previous peaks of 22-23 (1163) and still 230 billion above the pre-Covid levels of 2019.

The current phase is difficult to decipher, bearing in mind that the same clouds that hung over businesses at the beginning of last year, i.e. tariffs, cars, German stalemate and war, have only partly changed. On the international trade front, the real difference concerns the uncertainty, which has now been removed.

While the gloomier predictions on penalty rates have not materialised, the average 15% to the EU is still a significant burden. A basic scheme on which, moreover, for a vast area of mechanics, 50% tariffs are grafted onto the steel, aluminium or copper component, a scheme whose interpretation is still uncertain and vague in US customs and which leads numerous sectors to have average real penalty rates of even more than 20-25%. If in the first ten months of the year sales to Washington seem to be unaffected by tariffs (+9.1%, a new record), what is affecting the average is the pharmaceutical industry (+60.6%), which generates five billion more revenues: for the rest of manufacturing, growth in the USA in 2025 is therefore zero. Similar scenario for global manufacturing, which in ten months is advancing by 3.4% thanks to pharmaceuticals, without which progress would be limited to 0.6%.