Donald Trump sparks new tariff war over Italian pasta ‘like a bomb going off’

The US President has triggered a food fight by threatening to whack a 107% mark-up on traditional Italian pasta, in a bid to support American-made spaghetti

Italian pasta faces being wiped out by Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The US President has triggered a food fight by threatening to whack a 107% mark-up on the traditional treat.

The move is designed to support US-made spaghetti.

European producers said the tariff was a ‘devastating’ threat to their livelihoods.

Makers are begging Italian PM Giorgia Meloni to use her charm to pull Don back from the brink.

Giuseppe Ferro, chief executive of La Molisana, which has been making pasta since 1912, said under the tariffs, ‘it would be impossible for us to work’.

Massimiliano Giansanti, head of the farming group Confagricoltura, said: “The US market accounts for 12% of Italy’s production, so if we lose that, it will be like a bomb going off in the economy of southern Italy, where durum wheat for pasta is grown.”

Ettore Prandini, the president of Italy’s biggest agribusiness association Coldiretti, said the tariffs would be a ‘fatal blow’ for the nation’s pasta.

Trump’s 15% tariff on European goods has already been blamed for a 21% decline in Italian food exports to the US in August.

Then came US allegations against two Italian pasta producers of price dumping – where products are exported cheaply to a country to the detriment of local producers.

That prompted Trump to impose a punitive 92% extra tariff on Italian pasta exporters – pushing the total to 107%.

Prandini claimed the dumping ‘never happened’ and said the move would now double the price of Italian pasta in the US and ‘practically cancel’ annual exports worth £580m.

Meloni is under pressure to act after championing Italian food around the world as a cornerstone of national identity.

Her government has lambasted the European Commission for restricting the freedom of Italian farmers with red tape, but is now appealing to the commission to help overturn Trump’s tariff.

Olof Gill, the commission’s trade spokesman, said the EC was ‘in close co-ordination with the Italian government, is engaging with the US on this investigation and will intervene as necessary’.