How to Build a Successful Commercial Strategy

American protectionism has changed the rules of the game. It has not eliminated them.

Between August 2025 and March 2026, Italian SMEs lost €1.293 billion in exports to the United States. Five point three million per day. The EU-US Turnberry agreement stabilizes the regulatory framework, but does not remove the economic pressure. For a manufacturing company operating on compressed margins, a structural increase in the cost of access to the world’s second-largest market is not a temporary anomaly to manage: it is a permanent variable to integrate into strategy.

The correct response is not to exit the United States. It is to enter it the right way.

The problem is not the tariffs. It is the access model.

Most Italian SMEs exporting to the US operate through an importer, agent, or specialized retailer. It is a model that has worked for decades because it transferred commercial risk to a local intermediary and required minimal investment in structure. The problem is that this same model is the first to fail when the final consumer price increases.

When a 15% tariff enters the customs price, the American importer has three options: absorb the cost by reducing their own margin, transfer it downstream to the retail price, or replace the Italian supplier with a less exposed alternative. In most cases, they choose the third. SMEs that at that moment do not have a direct relationship with the market, neither with the end customer nor with the second-tier distributor, have no negotiating leverage. They suffer the decision.

The supply chain is hit asymmetrically because the finished product is the most exposed to retail price comparison and most dependent on the importer’s distribution network. Those who had built a direct presence in the American market, recognizable brands, showrooms, loyal customers, held up better. Those who sold through an intermediary lost orders without tools to recover them.

This is not a tariff problem. It is a commercial depth problem.

How to Build a Presence That Resists Protectionism

Consolidating position in the American market in a structurally higher tariff context requires a change of approach across three dimensions.

First dimension: value positioning, not price positioning.

Made in Italy does not compete on cost. It cannot do so and must not attempt it. The risk of tariffs is that the price increase is perceived as a general competitiveness problem, pushing companies to seek solutions on the cost side—reduced margins, alternative materials, compressed quality—instead of working on value perception. This is the wrong direction.

Premium segments withstand tariff variations better because the buyer does not evaluate absolute price but the relationship between price and perceived value. A 15% increase on a $200 product is a loss of competitiveness. The same increase on a $2,000 product with a story, a territory, a recognizable production identity is a price increase that the customer absorbs or justifies. The priority for a manufacturing SME seeking to maintain share in the US is to invest in building this perception: product communication, physical presence in the right channels, work with high-end distributors.

Second dimension: direct commercial structure.

The single-importer model is fragile by definition. A company seeking to build a stable presence in the US must progressively reduce dependence on uncontrolled intermediaries and develop more direct commercial relationships—with buyers, with selected multi-brand distributors, with specialized retailers. This does not necessarily mean opening a branch or company: it means mapping the American value chain, identifying critical nodes, and controlling at least one with proprietary resources or with a locally rooted partner.

The companies that maintained volumes during the tariff period are those that had built over time a network of relationships that did not depend on a single point of access. Commercial resilience is structure, not luck.

Third dimension: selective physical presence.

A headquarters is not needed. A presence is. Trade shows, temporary showrooms, structured trade missions, representation with exclusive mandate in specific geographic areas. The American market is vast and segmented: the East Coast and West Coast are distinct commercial contexts, with different buyers, different purchasing cultures, different distribution dynamics. A company entering the US as if it were a homogeneous market—with a single national importer—has not yet understood which market it is operating in.

Diversification Is Not Fallback: It Is Architecture

The response to tariffs is not either/or: one does not choose between “staying in the US” and “opening new markets.” The companies that will emerge stronger from this phase are those that will do both simultaneously, with different commercial architectures for different markets.

Europe
remains the market of greatest structural accessibility—common rules, consolidated logistics, culturally aligned buyers. For many Italian SMEs it is also the most underdeveloped market in terms of active commercial penetration. Having an agent in Germany or France does not equate to having a strategy for Germany or France.

GCC
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar—is the market offering the most interesting combination of demand growth, absence of tariffs on European imports, and structural appreciation for Made in Italy. It is a market where Italian quality in segments such as furnishings, premium food, machinery, and capital goods finds a natural counterpart. It is also a market that requires understanding of local dynamics—relational, cultural, regulatory—that cannot be acquired with one trade show and a translated catalog.

The logic is not to find the market that replaces the US. It is to build a commercial geography sufficiently distributed to make dependence on any single market irrelevant—including the American one.

What Separates Companies That Grow from Those That Suffer

The territorial data on tariffs is revealing. Lombardy and Veneto lose 10.4% and 4.1% of exports to the US respectively. Emilia-Romagna grows by 2.6%, Tuscany by 10.6%. Same tariff context, same dollar devaluation, opposite results. The difference is not geographic: it is structural. The companies that held up are those that had invested in brand positioning, in direct commercial relationships, in a presence in the American market that did not depend on a single intermediary.

Protectionism accelerates a selection that was already underway. Companies that had built a solid commercial structure absorbed the shock. Those that exported opportunistically—volumes driven by importer demand, no direct control, no brand work—lost share without tools to recover it.

This is the correct reading of tariffs for an Italian SME: not an external emergency to shelter from, but a test of commercial maturity. Those who pass the test emerge with a more robust structure and a more balanced market geography. Those who passively suffer it emerge with less market and the same structural fragilities.

Conclusion

The time to build that structure is now, not when the next shock arrives.

Atlantic Partners supports leaders and organizations with integrated growth projects, and the companies that today adopt this model thanks to our support not only accelerate entry into new markets, but position themselves to dominate the competition in the long term.