Load up on linguine and stock up on spaghetti. In the new year, high-quality pasta may be a lot harder to come by in American stores. Several weeks ago, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that, starting in January, most pasta imported from Italy could be subject to a preliminary 92 percent tariff—on top of the 15 percent blanket duty on goods from the European Union. Outraged Italian pasta manufacturers are threatening to pull their products from American shelves.
The proposed tariff, the result of a year-long investigation into the pasta industry, targets 13 Italian companies that have allegedly undercut U.S. manufacturers by selling underpriced pasta. Pasta tensions between the United States and Italy have been simmering since the 1990s, but this new proposal has turned up the heat. White House Press Secretary Kush Desai told me that some of the companies “screwed up” their initial response to the probe by providing the U.S. government with incomplete data, but if they comply going forward, the Commerce Department may yet recalculate its tariff. The pastifici insist that they’re being unfairly targeted, and an Italian agricultural industry group has said they won’t give in to pressure. That could leave American noodle connoisseurs in an impastable situation.
The affected companies, which include La Molisana, Pasta Garofalo, and Rummo, manufacture the usual penne and rigatoni as well as fancier shapes: tubular bucatini, spiraling elicoidali, and delicate rings of anelli siciliani. Notably, all of them specialize in “bronze-cut” pasta. This term refers to the tool, known as a die, used to extrude the pasta dough into shapes. Using a bronze die gives the pasta a slightly sandpapery texture, which clings better to sauce and results in a more satisfying bite. (Indeed, I have tasted bronze-cut pappardelle, and it is spectacular.) Bronze-cut pasta imbues the water in which it is boiled with extra starch, and ladling some of that water back into the pan while mixing pasta and sauce—nonnegotiable for pasta enthusiasts—creates a silky dish, the chef J. Kenji López-Alt told me.
Most of the pasta made and sold in America is not bronze-cut, but extruded using plastic molds coated with Teflon, according to Tom Sheridan, president of sales and international development at the U.S.-based Kensington Food Company, which makes bronze-cut pasta. A pasta die is about the size of a car tire, dotted with 40 to 60 inserts that extrude the dough, Scott Ketchum, a co-founder of the American bronze-cut-pasta brand Sfoglini, told me. Bronze inserts aren’t as durable as plastic ones, so they need to be replaced more often. Ketchum said that he spends roughly $4,000 every two years to buy new inserts from Italy. Each shape requires a different insert, Tony Adams, the owner of Mill Valley Pasta, told me. And a major downside of making more textured pasta is that it produces huge amounts of pasta dust, necessitating even more equipment and labor to clean up the machinery, according to Dan Pashman, who hosts the Sporkful podcast and created his own pasta shape that launched with Sfoglini in 2021. Teflon pasta is cheaper to make because the dough simply glides out of the die, resulting in a faster and more streamlined process—and pasta that is gummier and less adherent to sauce.
These days, the average American is likely more concerned with price than the mouthfeel of their macaroni. Still, over roughly the past decade, demand for better-quality pasta has grown. Barilla, known in the United States for its inexpensive American-made products, launched its Al Bronzo line of imported Italian pasta in 2022. Even midrange stores such as Target and Wegmans sell their own bronze-cut pasta. House-brand pastas are usually imported from Italy, so they too may be affected by tariffs, Ketchum said.
[From the July 1986 issue: Pasta]
Bronze-cut pasta’s popularity is growing in part because Americans are becoming more savvy about their food. “Pretty much all the pasta was Teflon” until people started learning that there were tastier alternatives, Pashman told me. Recently, the appetite for bronze-cut pasta has also been whetted by health fears. In wellness circles, Teflon is basically synonymous with poison because it comes from a family of chemicals, called PFAS, that have been linked to certain cancers and reproductive issues. On TikTok, lifestyle influencers encourage viewers to seek out bronze-cut pasta because it is supposedly healthier than its Teflon-extruded kin.
The concerns are largely a nonissue. Teflon cookware can release harmful chemicals when it’s overheated, but extruding pasta is a room-temperature affair, Sheridan told me. Teflon bits could flake off into the pasta, but the health effects of this are unclear, and the company that makes Teflon maintains that those particles are inert. As I have written previously, the health consequences of using PFAS-coated cookware are generally not well studied.
If the pasta tariff goes into effect, bronze-cut pasta will almost certainly be rarer on U.S. shelves. More than half of America’s pasta imports—much of which is bronze-cut—come from Italy. Historically, and even more so now, companies don’t have much incentive to start making it domestically: “It’s gonna cost you a quarter of a million dollars or more to get into the game,” Sheridan said. Bronze-cut-pasta equipment from an Italian company called Fava Storci, which he called the Ferrari of pasta machinery, can cost upwards of $500,000. Such machines are hard to come by in the U.S., so they’re usually imported from Europe—and subject to their own tariffs.
[Read: A great way to get Americans to eat worse]
If the pastifici accept the Trump administration’s proposed tariffs, Americans who are fussy about their pasta—for culinary or health reasons—may soon have to make tough decisions: stomach another meal of slippery, Teflon-extruded penne, or pay extra for ridged radiatori? The alternative—that bronze-cut noodles simply won’t be available—is scarier still. After a decade of growing accustomed to the chewy, high-friction delight of bronze-cut shapes, many American foodies may find that they can’t get their teeth on them at all.
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