It’s no mystery that Donald Trump likes Giorgia Meloni.
After meeting the Italian far-right Prime Minister for the first time in Paris late last year, he described her as a “real live wire,” with whom he could “work to straighten out the world a little bit.”
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After a second meeting at Mar-a Lago in January, he called her a “fantastic woman” who has “really taken Europe by storm.” Later that month, she was the only E.U. head of government invited to Trump’s inauguration.
No wonder speculation started that she could become Europe’s Trump “whisperer.”
Since his election, she has carefully positioned herself as the closest mainstream European leader to Trump, boosting her credentials as a “bridge” between the new U.S. administration and Europe.
Her meeting with the U.S. President on Thursday in Washington will be a first test of this role, where Meloni will need to walk a diplomatic tightrope. The high-stakes meeting comes in the wake of Trump’s 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs for the E.U.
“It’s a difficult moment, let’s see how it goes over the coming hours,” she said at an event of Italian entrepreneurs on Tuesday morning. “I feel no pressure about the next two days, as you can imagine,” she added with a pinch of irony.
Meloni undoubtedly has ideological affinities with Trump and her views on matters such as immigration, LGTBQ rights, and abortion overlap with his.
If her fiery rhetoric against immigration and “gender ideology” makes her a kindred spirit, she leads a country whose interests are inextricably tied to those of the E.U.—the entity which was formed to “screw” the U.S., to borrow Trump’s words.
Over these past few months, she has steered clear of any direct criticism of Trump, trying to reconcile the growing gulf between her ideological instincts, which lie with Washington, and Italy’s strategic position within Europe. Part of this approach reflects the historical importance of Italy’s close ties with the U.S., which it has used as an insurance policy against French and German dominance of the E.U.
To this end, she opted to have a more conciliatory tone than her European partners on several occasions. She always showed her unwavering support to Ukraine and to its President but didn’t condemn the extraordinary dressing-down Volodymyr Zelensky faced at White House in front of the world’s media. Her reaction to that fiasco was to propose an immediate summit “between the U.S., European states, and allies in order to speak frankly about how we intend to address today’s major challenges, starting with Ukraine, which we have defended together in these years.”
But it is on the economic side of things where Meloni’s delicate balancing act will face its stiffest test.
Italy is the E.U.’s third largest exporter to the U.S. and maintains a nearly €40 billion trade surplus, behind only Germany and Ireland. Major businesses are nervous and her Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has called on Meloni to put her country’s interests first and above those of Europe. But that would divide the 27-member bloc as it scrambles to convince Trump to stand down on tariffs that would jeopardize Europe’s economy—and Italian exporters.
The E.U. has offered the U.S. a “zero-for-zero” tariff scheme for industrial goods, a similar agreement the pair came close to a decade ago in their discussions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which was then scuppered by Trump in his first term. But a trade deal seems a distant prospect.
E.U. officials are struggling to negotiate with their U.S. counterparts. The Trump Administration seems not to be engaging in the initial discussions on the tariffs, as the E.U. Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič put it after meeting top U.S. trade officials in Washington on Monday.
Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission that oversees trade negotiations, has been unable to speak with Trump since he took office. She has been in regular contact with Meloni and the two have discussed her White House visit.
Meloni previously said in a speech to Italian lawmakers that she wasn’t sure “it is necessarily wise to respond to tariffs with tariffs.” But she has also often fallen in line with the E.U. on trade. Her country, for example, voted to impose reciprocal tariffs in response to Trump’s steel and aluminum levies.
Meloni could offer to buy more liquified natural gas—something Trump has demanded from Europe—or American arms. With a domestic defense budget of only 1.5% of GDP, Italy is one of the main laggards within NATO.
Perhaps such offers would be enough to convince Trump to sit at the negotiating table with the E.U.
In any case, she will have a second opportunity to plead her case this week. Meloni will be back in Rome on Friday to meet U.S. Vice President JD Vance, whose attack on European values at the Munich Security Conference in February was condemned by the E.U. but defended by Meloni.
If her pragmatism prevails over her ideological instincts, and she defends European interests rather than just Italy’s short-term ones, Meloni will have some chances to obtain results from these meetings.
This will be good news for Europe. And for Italy.
