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Italian food producers have long fretted over competition from American brands that are made to look, and sound, as if they are from Italy. Some carry Italian flags and Tuscan-looking landscapes on their labels; others have (sometimes made-up) Italian-sounding names.
But since President Trump began his tariff war with Europe, those concerns have become outright alarm. American competitors could gain an unfair advantage in U.S. supermarkets, the Italians say, turning crumbled Gorgonzola cheese made in the Midwest into a new threat.
“They could take over,” said Fabio Leonardi, the chief executive of Igor, an Italian Gorgonzola producer in Novara, west of Milan. “Authentic Italian products could be replaced with Italian-sounding products from Wisconsin.”
That, according to one American, would be a culinary travesty.
“I will not go back to the green shaker of unrefrigerated dust that America calls Parm, has the balls to call Parm,” Stephen Colbert said on “The Late Show” this month. “I am not interested in eating eggplant à la dandruff.”
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Italy exports nearly $9 billion worth of foodstuffs to the United States, with Parmigiano-Reggiano, Gorgonzola, Prosecco and olive oil filling American kitchen cabinets and restaurant menus.
