In spite of the tightening of duties, the return to protectionism, the rejection of free trade agreements, and Brexit at the gates Italy’s food exports in this (almost) first half of 2018 continue to run, growing by 3.5% compared to 2017. However, given that at the moment we are still in a phase of ‘threats’ and not ‘obstacles’, we must not fool ourselves: all the problems described above prefigure a future scenario, although potentially imminent, says Denis Pantini, Head of the Agri-Food Area of the consulting and market analysis Italian company Nomisma.

Looking at the growth of Italian exports by single destination market, in most cases they are running more than those of competitor countries. While in the USA total food imports (in terms of value) fell by 4% over the period, imports from Italy increased by 4.5%. Something similar can be observed in Canada: given a 6.8% decrease in overall food imports, imports of Italian products increased by 4%. As for Europe, there was a 2.6% increase in food imports from Italy in the UK (compared to a total -2.4%), while in Germany’s imports from Italy increased by 5.8%. Finally, in Japan, with which the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) has just been signed, food imports grew by 1.6% against an overall reduction of 5.3%.