US consumers may want to stock up on Italian pasta

If you live in the US and your favorite pasta brand is from Italy, you may want to buy extra during your next shopping trip. Starting in January, the Trump administration is aiming to introduce tariffs of over 90% on Italian pasta. This tariff bump may be affected by the tariff case that is pending before the Supreme Court, but for now the plan is to set these high tariffs due to a practice known as dumping, which is when a company sells its products at a lower price in a foreign country than it does domestically.

Some US pasta makers complained to the Department of Commerce, which launched an inquiry, requesting several pasta companies to provide data on sales of their products. Commerce published its initial findings in September, but won’t provide the final report until January. Italian pasta companies have denied the allegations. According to Italy’s largest agricultural organization, Coldiretti, the proposed tariffs would “double the cost of a plate of pasta for American families,” while “paving the way for ‘Italian-sounding’ products and severely impacting Italian companies in the sector.” 

An interesting wrinkle in this story is that many Italian pasta companies import some of the durum wheat they use from the US, including a special variety grown in Arizona. If the Italian companies stop selling their products in the US, the market for this wheat will be disrupted. I couldn’t find recent statistics on what percentage of pasta sold in the US is imported, but from August 2024 through July 2025, the US imported $721 million dollars’ worth of Italian pasta, so this is not a niche product. The pastas that will be most affected are the bronze-cut varieties, since few US manufacturers use bronze dies.