Ceramics alarm. Ciarrocchi: "Europe should review the ETS regulation."

No one expected 30% tariffs. Even 10% would have had a significant impact, but with such a figure, "the Italian industry is deprived of its ability to export to the United States. And for us, this is a huge loss, because the United States is the ceramic industry's largest foreign market, with a value of over 700 million euros in 2024, approximately 14-15% of total turnover."

Augusto Ciarrocchi, president of Confindustria Ceramica, commented on Trump's decision to impose a 30% tariff on EU products entering the US. Last April, during Coverings, the trade fair organized in the United States by the association, the topic of tariffs was a prominent topic, and even the threat of a 20% tariff was considered unsustainable: at 30%, we're beyond all expectations.

"Furthermore, since it is a value-based tariff, this particularly harms Italian producers, because the average price of our tiles is already double that of our competitors, including Spanish ones," adds Ciarrocchi. "Not to mention that the tariffs are added to the devaluation of the dollar, which has now exceeded 12% since the beginning of the year." Since these are consumer goods, Italian tiles and sanitary ware (which together generate a production value of approximately 7.5 billion euros, with 80% of it exported) will also suffer the impact of the loss of purchasing power for US citizens themselves.

Nor does it seem to be a solution to transfer part of the production to the USA, as some large Italian ceramic companies have done since the 1980s, with huge investments, reaching a point where today they represent about a third of local production, which however covers barely half of the national demand.

"It's a structurally deficit market that must import," the president observes. "There's no doubt that these tariffs will fall on American consumers, but they will also hit our companies that produce there, because they must partly export from Italy." Furthermore, it will cost more to purchase the technologies, which also come from Italy.