Cost and Availability of Italian Pasta in the US

Italian Pasta Is Poised to Disappear From American Grocery Shelves

WSJ:

13 major Italian pasta brands could disappear from US store shelves as 107% tariffs take effect

New York Post:

ETA: originally posted on FTC.

Yikes. I guess I feel better about being a bit of a pasta hoarder :grimacing: Might hafta get MOAR, tho.

One can never have too much pasta in the house.

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That’s one way to get me eating fewer carbs I guess

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So my pandemic pasta hoard was a good idea,it appears …

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I wonder if the US border agents are going to be checking for pasta when people cross back into Detroit and Buffalo.

Currently, Canadians are allowed to send gifts with values of up to $100 to the US without tariffs, by mail. Maybe I should be sending Italian pasta to my friends this Xmas?

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That would be kind-hearted of you! Alas, the de minimis duty-free exception for goods being sent to the U.S. has been removed, which has made things messy. Canada Post could help guide you here. I won’t get into the weeds, but if it were me, I’d first check with them before buying pasta for my gift packages. You note the gift exception, but me being a skeptic, the situation would send me to my local post office for a quick chat to see how things are going.

As for me, I don’t like thinking about the possibility of being separated from my favorite Italian brand of pasta. Garofalo brand is one that I have been relying on as a pantry staple.

The net effect for some of us is that if these brands do disappear from U.S. shelves, we will be cut off from access to high-quality pastas that we’ve been able to get at an affordable price. Messing with a staple food, ouch.

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I sent my cousin some coffee 2 weeks ago. There’s a new process, where I had to upload a photo of the goods , some AI software from a 3rd party assesses the photo, gives me a url code, then Canada Post takes the url code, I answered some questions, pay my postage, and then the parcel was sent.

I will be careful about keeping the value to $100 or less, just in case anyone is being a stickler on the American side.

I like Garofalo pasta, too.

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Whoa, now that’s a process! I am glad it is working out. Let us not comment on whether all that complicated stickler-ness is useful. :upside_down_face:

Our staples from the Garofalo brand are the linguine and the mezze maniche rigate. I expect I’ll be stocking up.

My husband was observing that we also lean into a local pasta maker’s dried pastas, which are of the whole grain sort. Funny thing is that I just realized that La Milanaise of Quebec supplies her with semolina. If grains from Canada are ever affected by US tariffs, I will be in even more of a pasta pickle.

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I think Canadian grain farmers have been affected in some ways already but hopefully it won’t affect you as a consumer.

I recently purchased a massive gift basket full of Italian foods from a silent auction, so I’ve been trying some new Italian brands of various pantry goods that I haven’t tried before. I’ll have to check which brand of pasta was in the basket.

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This is from August but not sure things have been resolved. Doesn’t seem so if the rules keep changing like this. The logic then was where do you send the tariff money and other confusion due to the suddenness of the changes.

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The sending mail to and from Canada situation keeps changing.

I just check in person at the post office and hope for the best.

I sent a bday gift to a Californian friend by ordering something from @Babette’s chocolate shop in Washington, to avoid having to deal with customs last week.

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention: If you are in the US, try to support small businesses in your area when you do your pantry stock-ups. They, and the distributors they buy from, have been navigating the uncertainty and higher costs of importing foods.

Supporting our small businesses is a way we can take care of each other.

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The article didn’t say, but I wonder if popular brands De Cecco and Barilla are affected.

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These are the 13 brands which might stop selling the n the US - “ Along with Pasta Garofalo, La Molisana and Rummo, the impacted pasta brands include Agritalia, Aldino, Antiche Tradizioni Di Gragnano, Barilla, Gruppo Milo, Pastificio Artigiano Cav. Giuseppe Cocco, Pastificio Chiavenna, Pastificio Liguori, Pastificio Sgambaro and Pastificio Tamma.”

Barilla has also pasta factories in the US and that might have an impact on their future availability

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De Cecco and Barilla are both multinational companies. Not sure if the new Trump imposed tariffs are different but Google AI search says multinationals avoid tariffs by:

Multinational companies use a variety of legal and strategic methods to mitigate or avoid the impact of U.S. tariffs, including: supply chain restructuring , product modification (tariff engineering) , and leveraging customs programs .

…and…

Yes, multinational corporations are avoiding tariffs through various strategies, such as relocating production to different countries, modifying products to change their tariff classification, and reorganizing supply chains. Other methods include using bonded warehouses to store goods without paying tariffs immediately, and allocating costs across their global supply chain to reduce the burden on a single entity.

My guess is the small companies/direct importers are getting hit and the multinationals are skirting.

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I read somewhere that Barilla will be less affected than other brands

It’s mentioned in this article.

As honkman mentioned , because Barilla makes pasta in the States