Made-in-Italy exports run: jump in the USA (+34%) thanks to orders for ships
Extra-EU sales up 9.9%, Washington +34.4%. Imports up, trade surplus down
by Luca Orlando
One-off shipbuilding orders and the United States are the driving force behind non-EU exports in September, with Istat recording an average increase of 9.9%. The US leap was decisive, a growth of 34.4% replicated more strongly on the import side, up more than 70%.
A large part of this growth is linked to one-off orders for ships, without which the progress towards the USA would be limited to 12%. For the rest, in the absence of sectoral data, which will only be available later together with EU data, it can be assumed that it is still pharmaceuticals that are responsible for this double-digit surge. Growth is now not episodic, bearing in mind that in nine months on average our sales to the USA grew by 9.5%. Progress is however visible in sales of Italian products almost everywhere, with the exception of Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Mercosur.
The trade surplus, as a result of a significant jump in purchases from abroad (+16.9% for imports with strong increases from the USA, China and India) is falling and in the nine months it dropped to EUR 35.1 billion, a sharp decrease compared to the same period in 2024 (+ EUR 45.4 billion).
With the September figure, the balance for the first nine months of the year in non-EU markets rises to +2.6%.
In detail
In September 2025, exports grew on an annual basis by 9.9% (it was -7.0% in August). The year-on-year growth in domestic exports to non-EU markets was due to the increase in sales of energy (+16.8%), capital goods (+13.0%), non-durable consumer goods (+12.8%) and intermediate goods (+10.2%); only exports of consumer durables decreased on an annual basis (-17.1%). Imports recorded a year-on-year increase of 16.9%, to which the main contributors were higher purchases of non-durable consumer goods (+58.4%).
