WTI Magazine #64    2015 July, 10
Author : Confartigianato      Translation by:

At the conference "Towards the TTIP: a focus on exports to the US for SME" held at EXPO2015 Confartigianato has presented the report "Towards the TTIP. Italian exports to the United States of America" that contains a specific focus on Made in Italy to the USA in the fields of Micro and Small Enterprises. The work shows the data interchange of the two areas that together account for 46.4% of world GDP: European Union for 22.1% and the US for 24.3%.

Available forecasts indicate a significant dynamism of the US market, with imports in the period 2015-2017 that will grow by 5.3%, a faster rate than the 4.1% in the Euro Zone and than the 4.0% of the advanced economies.

The dynamics in the course of EU-US trade is influenced by the exchange rate euro/dollar: in May 2015 euro marks a devaluation of 24.2% compared to a year earlier, a level not observed since over 12 years.

Recent trends indicate that as for foreign trade in the first quarter of 2015, the best performance of Made in Italy is recorded right on the US market (+ 39.4%), followed by the Czech Republic (+ 9.5%), India (+8, 8%), Poland (+ 8.4%), the UK (+ 7.2%) and Turkey (+ 6.6%).

The cumulative exports in the 12 months between April 2014 and March 2015 is 32.327 million of euro, growing by 18.0% compared to a year earlier, a far greater growth rate than the 2.4% one recorded for the total of Italian exports.

In particular the report of the Confartigianato Research Department examines the performance of exports in sectors where the incidence of workers in micro and small enterprises (up to 50 employees) exceeds 60% and in particular stresses that Italy is the third European exporter to the US, behind Germany and the United Kingdom, but become the first EU country exporter in the sectors with the highest concentration of micro and small businesses, with a value of 8.0 billion in 2014, over the 7.1 billion of Germany and the 3.6 billion of France.

The sectoral analysis reveals export increases of over ten percentage points in important sectors where small businesses operate, in particular glasses fixtures and frames with 13.3%, clothing with 11.0% and footwear with 10.8%.

The territorial analysis shows that, considering the five major exporting regions, the largest growth in exports of Micro and Small Enterprises is detected in Veneto where exports to the US increased by 13.8%. The second region is Emilia-Romagna with a growth of 10.9%, followed by Tuscany with 8.7%, Lombardy with 7.5% and Piedmont with 4.4%.