EU pushes back as US revives trade pressure on bloc

The European Union pushed back on Friday at renewed trade pressure from the United States, as Washington said the bloc was enabling Chinese evasion of US tariffs and stepped up calls for it to roll back flagship green rules on businesses, The Local Italy reported.

The dispute, which has simmered through the summer, now touches the industrial districts of central Italy, where small and mid-sized firms in sectors like footwear, furniture and mechanics depend on open transatlantic and European supply chains.

For the Marche region, whose economy is built on export-oriented family firms, the stakes are concrete: any new US tariffs on European goods, or on Chinese inputs routed through the bloc, would ripple through order books in the shoe and leather districts around Fermo and Macerata.

The Local Italy's report, citing EU officials, said Brussels rejected the US characterisation and defended its green regulatory agenda, arguing that climate measures were compatible with open trade and that the bloc was not a backdoor for tariff evasion. The US administration has repeatedly threatened duties on European products, including cars and machinery, if the EU did not align with its trade policies toward China.

For Marche's manufacturing districts, the transatlantic dispute is not abstract. The region's footwear and leather goods sector, concentrated around Fermo and Macerata, exports heavily to the United States, and its supply chains often source components from across Europe and beyond. A tariff escalation would raise costs for these small firms, which typically operate on thin margins and cannot easily absorb new duties.

The regional chamber of commerce, while not named in the wire, has in the past flagged the importance of stable trade relations for the area's 8,000-plus manufacturing enterprises. The EU's pushback, according to the report, signals that Brussels is prepared to defend its regulatory autonomy, a stance that resonates in a region where craft industries have long relied on both European standards and global markets.

The green rules Washington wants rolled back include the bloc's sustainability reporting directives and carbon border measures. For Marche's furniture and mechanics districts, which are increasingly investing in energy-efficient production to meet these standards, a reversal would create uncertainty over long-term investments already made.

The dispute is expected to dominate discussions at the next EU-US trade forum, with both sides signalling little room for compromise. For now, Marche's exporters watch and wait, hoping that diplomacy prevails before the autumn order season begins.