Italian companies are proving particularly resilient even in the face of the tariff challenge unleashed by US President Donald Trump. Over the course of 2025, Italian exports to the United States grew by 7.2% in value, even though the Italian trade balance with the US, while largely positive, decreased by €4.692 billion, falling to €34.191 billion. This is the snapshot provided by Istat, the Italian National Institute of Statistics. Overall, 2025 was a record year for Italian exports, which increased by 3.3% compared to the previous year, with a trade surplus of €50.7 billion, up €2.5 billion from €48.2 billion in 2024. Looking more closely, it emerges that the main contributors to the growth in Italian sales abroad were pharmaceutical, chemical-medicinal, and botanical products (+28.5%), base metals and metal products excluding machinery and equipment (+9.8%), transport equipment excluding motor vehicles (+11.6%), and food, beverage, and tobacco products (+4.3%). At the same time, Istat found that export growth in value in 2025 was driven both by increased direct sales to EU markets (+4.2%) - particularly to Spain (+10.6%), France (+5.3%), Germany (+2.3%), and Poland (+5.8%) - and by increased direct sales to some key non-EU partner countries, including Switzerland (+16.3%), the United States (+7.2%), and OPEC countries (+11%). Conversely, Italian exports to Turkey (-23.1%), which had seen strong growth in 2024, and, to a lesser extent, to China (-6.6%), declined sharply.