Our dear friend and revered food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins recently interviewed our very own president, Beatrice, about the growing and tragic impact of the new U.S. tariffs on imported Italian food. As always, Nancy put it beautifully.
Here is her piece in full:
My friend Beatrice Ughi is a certified, cento per cento, as we say, Italian who determined some years ago to satisfy an apparently insatiable American thirst/hunger for fine Italian food products. Since establishing her company, Gustiamo.com, in 1999, she has expanded exponentially and now supplies both retail and wholesale customers, restaurants, food shops, and chefs and cooks, all across the country. I talked with her last week about the implications for imported Italian food products of Trump’s 15% tariffs across the board. For Beatrice, and for several others whom I know in the importing business, the prospects are, to say the least, grim. While big companies like Lavazza (coffee) or Ferrero (Nutella et al.) or Mutti (tomatoes) may be willing to absorb the tariffs as the cost of doing business in the United States, Beatrice pointed out that the kind of small, artisanal producers of very high-quality goods that her company represents (the fabulous olives and olive oils, the small-craft pastas, organic rice, hand-crafted salts, beans and legumes, tomato products like those Gustarosso tomatoes, and jars of fragrant jams and condiments)—these are the people who may be severely damaged by the imposition of another 15% on top of an already (and deservedly) expensive product. And while the craftsmen, the producers, will surely suffer, so will the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of American consumers who value the kind of expertise and craftsmanship that is probably Italy’s single greatest export.
One big problem, Beatrice told me, is the impact tariffs will have on what she called “all that fake Italian, Italian-style, made-in-Italy stuff.” Italy, as a brand, is a huge seller (think food, wine, fashion, motorcars), but the Italian government and Italian producers are increasingly concerned with Italian-seeming labels appended to products that have not seen more of Italy than possibly a dockside container in Napoli or Genova. “People are still very ignorant about what is truly Italian,” Beatrice said—and I would confirm that, just from my own observations of all the “Italian” products that have little or no connection to Italy at all. Pasta sauces and olive oils with Italian-sounding names and labels that evoke a bucolic Italian countryside with peasant girls in kerchiefs harvesting grapes or olives or tomatoes. Balsamic vinegar is an excellent example of this. Few American consumers understand real aceto balsamico tradizionale, instead making do with ordinary wine vinegar that’s been thickened and sweetened with caramel syrup.
It’s Gresham’s Law (“bad money drives out good”), we agreed, only applied to fine Italian foods, with cheap products driving out quality. To which I can only add the Ancient Roman caution: Caveat emptor!
Tariffs are more than a political talking point. They are not only a problem for producers, they affect all of us: chefs, home cooks, and consumers who value real Italian craftsmanship. As Nancy so clearly lays out, the new 15% tariffs on imported goods threaten the survival of small Italian artisans, the integrity of honest Italian ingredients, and the ability for American consumers to taste the real thing.
At Gustiamo, our mission remains unchanged. We stand with Italian artisans and continue to fight to ensure that American consumers have access to real Italian food. Because when quality is pushed aside by fakes, we all lose.
Grazie, Nancy, for for putting this urgent issue into words and for your passionate work about food as one of the highest forms of culture.