Milan, 7 October 2026 - Despite the energy crisis, geopolitical tensions, instability along trade routes and the resurgence of tariff barriers, Italian exports continue to demonstrate considerable resilience. In 2025, Italian goods exports reached €643.2 billion, up 3.3% on the previous year, confirming the strength of Italy’s productive base in international markets.
This resilience is particularly significant given the context in which businesses have had to operate in recent years, facing rising energy costs, disruption to trade routes, geopolitical tensions and the return of tariff measures simultaneously. Italy thus continues to rank among the world’s leading exporting economies, thanks to the ability of its businesses to adapt to a profoundly changed competitive environment.
This is the picture that emerges from the new Promos Italia White Paper, Energy and International Competitiveness: How the Energy Crisis Has Changed Italian Exports and Regional Economies. The report traces the evolution of Italian exports between 2021 and 2026, drawing on data and analysis from ISTAT, the Bank of Italy, Eurostat, the European Commission and the Italian Trade Agency (ICE).
“The most significant finding is the ability Italian businesses have demonstrated to remain competitive in international markets during a period of exceptional complexity,” says Giovanni Da Pozzo, President of Promos Italia. “Between 2021 and 2025, export values held up considerably better than volumes, and many businesses managed to protect their revenues and market positioning through pricing and diversification strategies. This ability to respond represents a key strength of our productive system. The challenge now is to consolidate it and make it an increasingly structural feature of our economy.”
From the energy crisis to a new competitive landscape
In 2022, at the height of the energy shock, goods exports exceeded €626 billion, rising by more than 20% in nominal terms. This growth was also driven by higher prices, while volumes contracted in subsequent years, falling by 5.1% in 2023 and 2.4% in 2024.
In 2025, Italian exports returned to growth, reaching €643.153 billion. Performance varied across the country’s geographical areas: exports rose by 13.2% in Central Italy, 2.3% in the North-West, 2.0% in the North-East and 3.2% in the South, while the Islands recorded an 11% contraction.
Lombardy remains Italy’s leading exporting region, with exports exceeding €167 billion, followed by Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Tuscany and Piedmont.
Sectoral trends also played a decisive role. In 2025, growth in pharmaceutical exports from Tuscany, Lazio, Lombardy, Abruzzo and Campania contributed a combined 2.6 percentage points to national export growth, while metals and metal products from Tuscany accounted for a further percentage point.
The energy situation has improved since the 2022 peak: the energy trade deficit, which had exceeded €110 billion, fell to €46.9 billion in 2025. Nevertheless, energy remains a strategic issue for business competitiveness. Industrial gas and electricity prices in the European Union are still significantly higher than those in some of its major trading partners.
Energy, logistics and geopolitics are becoming central to business strategy
The transformation goes beyond energy costs alone. The war in Ukraine, the Red Sea crisis, sanctions, tariffs and growing dependence on certain strategic inputs are all reshaping the operating environment for exporters.
The Red Sea is a case in point. According to the Bank of Italy, based on 2022 trade flows, almost 16% of Italy’s goods imports by value and around 7% of its exports passed through this route. The diversion of Asia–Europe shipping routes around the Cape of Good Hope has led to longer transit times and greater volatility in transport costs, bringing logistics back to the forefront of international competitiveness.
Trade policy has also regained its influence over business strategy. In 2025, the United States accounted for 10.8% of Italian goods exports, making it Italy’s second-largest export market after Germany. The impact of the new US tariffs on Italian exports in 2025 was negative overall, although relatively limited on average and varying across sectors.
At the same time, China is becoming increasingly important both as a supplier of inputs and as an industrial competitor. In 2025, Italian imports from China rose by 17.2%, accounting for 10.3% of total imports, while the value of Chinese-origin production inputs used by Italian manufacturing increased by 60% between 2017 and 2025.
The latest figures confirm continued resilience
Developments in 2026 provide further evidence of this trend. In the first seven months of the year, Italian goods exports increased by 4.6%, while imports rose by 4.3%. In July, exports were up 4.7% year on year in value terms.
Markets outside the EU have also performed positively. In August 2026, exports to non-EU markets rose by 16.1% year on year, while over the first eight months of the year they increased by 5.8%.
At the same time, trends in export volumes and renewed pressure from energy costs confirm that export growth is taking place in an environment that remains complex.
The next challenge: turning resilience into lasting competitiveness
According to the White Paper, businesses’ international competitiveness must now be assessed alongside their ability to manage risk.
“The international competitiveness of SMEs must now also be understood in terms of their ability to operate amid structurally higher levels of instability,” Da Pozzo adds. “A business may have an excellent product and an attractive target market, yet remain vulnerable if it depends on a single critical supplier, one logistics route, a single energy source or a limited number of markets. Internationalisation strategies must therefore combine an understanding of demand and competitors with an increasingly thorough assessment of supply chain risks, energy exposure, logistics and opportunities for diversification.”
Before the pandemic, global value chains were assessed primarily in terms of efficiency and cost. Today, these considerations must be balanced against continuity, substitutability and geopolitical risk.
For SMEs operating internationally, it is therefore essential to understand not only the contribution of individual destination markets to turnover, but also supplier concentration, the origin of strategic inputs, the energy embedded in products, dependence on logistics routes and exposure to sanctions, tariffs and export controls.
“Diversification is no longer limited to destination markets; it must also extend to suppliers, energy sources, logistics routes and critical inputs,” Da Pozzo concludes. “Italian exports have demonstrated their ability to protect their value even during a period of considerable instability. The challenge now is to turn this capacity to respond into increasingly robust and sustainable competitiveness, safeguarding margins, production continuity and market access even when several risk factors come into play simultaneously.”
Promos Italia
Promos Italia is the national agency of Italy’s Chamber of Commerce system. It supports Italian businesses in their internationalisation efforts and works alongside public institutions to foster local economic development and promote the strengths of local areas.