As Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni prepared to travel to Washington last month, she was betting that her ideological rapport with US President Donald Trump could help convince him of the value of the transatlantic alliance — even as his administration has made clear through policy and rhetoric its disdain for the European Union.
The two met at the White House in mid-April, making Meloni the first European leader to visit Trump since he announced sweeping new tariffs on EU goods earlier in the month. It came amid a US retreat from NATO and wavering support for Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia, which invaded its sovereign neighbour more than three years ago.
Speaking to Meloni, Trump said “there’ll be a trade deal, 100 per cent” with the EU before the end of the 90-day freeze on some of the tariffs that he implemented shortly after calling for them. He also promised to visit Rome “in the near future” for a meeting that could include other European officials. If that plays out, it would further strengthen Meloni's image as the EU’s ‘Trump whisperer.’
Beyond trade, the two leaders bonded over their shared right-wing worldviews. Picking up on Trump’s signature slogan, Meloni said that she wanted to make the “West great again.” Still, whether Trump will meet Meloni's “zero-for-zero” tariff proposal between the EU and the US remains unclear.
Since Trump’s re-election in November, Meloni has brandished her ideological affinity with the president — and her friendship with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, now one of Trump’s closest political advisers — to position herself as the natural bridge between Brussels and Washington.
The high-stakes meeting took place a week after Trump, bowing to market pressure, called for a temporary suspension of the most punitive tariffs announced on his “Liberation Day” on 2 April. The backpedalling, however, left in place a blanket 10% tariff on all imports of EU goods, which came on top of 25% tariffs imposed by the Trump administration earlier this year on European aluminium, steel and cars — measures that threaten to further strain an already fragile European economy.
Inside Meloni’s strategy
For months, Meloni has carefully avoided picking sides between the US and the EU — a strategy that has placed her on shaky middle ground. At the height of a diplomatic spat between Washington and Kyiv in early March, she stood out as the only major EU leader who, rather than condemn Trump’s decision to slash military aid to Ukraine, called for an EU–US summit to repair transatlantic ties.
Meloni has been an ardent supporter of Ukraine since taking office in 2022. But to analysts well-versed in Italian foreign policy, her consistent emphasis on preserving transatlantic unity is hardly surprising.
“Meloni is following a traditional path in Italy’s right-wing playbook, which has historically favoured a more direct relationship with Washington over Brussels,” said Filippo Simonelli, a researcher at the IAI Institute for International Affairs, a Rome-based think tank.
Still, her determination to avoid alienating Trump’s America was put to the test when the president initially hit the EU with a 20% tariff, above his “baseline” 10% rate. Meloni quickly condemned the move as “wrong” and said that tariffs were “in no one’s interest.”
The stakes are high for Italy — second only to Germany within the EU — as an export-driven economy for which the US is its second-largest market. A more protectionist US trade policy could cost Italy billions of euros that will be near impossible to make up with other trading partners, according to Italian industry association Confindustria.
EU unity or Italy-first?
Meloni’s visit to Washington fuelled a mix of anxiety and hope among European leaders, EU diplomats said. France, in particular, had voiced fears that her solo expedition risked undermining the European negotiating stance.
Ahead of the trip, France’s ministry for industry, Marc Ferracci, accused Meloni of undermining European unity. His comments triggered a prompt response from Rome: "Why is it that when President [Emmanuel] Macron goes to Washington, everything seems to be fine, but when Meloni goes it isn’t?” retorted Italy’s minister for European affairs, Tommaso Foti.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, negotiates for the bloc as a whole on trade policy. That means that national leaders like Meloni and Macron can try to exert pressure to shape the Commission’s negotiating stance, but cannot officially strike a deal with a trade partner like the US — a distinction Meloni made clear in her meeting with Trump.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Meloni have been in “regular contact,” Commission spokesperson Arianna Podestà had said before the meeting. “As the president publicly said, every contact with the US administration is welcome,” she added of Von der Leyen.
Diplomatic gains?
If recent diplomatic missions to Trump’s new White House are any indication, Meloni’s gains in Washington were expected to be modest.
In April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a long-standing Trump ally — travelled to Washington seeking an exemption from a newly imposed 17% tariff on Israeli goods. The meeting not only failed to shift Trump’s trade stance, but also ended in a promise from Netanyahu to completely remove Israel’s already negligible tariffs on US products.
In February, France’s Macron visited Trump with the aim of persuading the US president to rethink his stances on Ukraine and trade. Despite cordial tones, the exchange did little to change Trump’s mind on US involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war or his unwavering goal of balancing out the US goods trade deficit with the EU.
And with a trade surplus amounting to over €42.1 billion — coupled with one of the EU’s lowest rates of defence spending as a percentage of GDP — Italy hardly looks like the ideal negotiator. At the White House, Meloni assured Trump that Italy would soon meet NATO's two per cent spending guideline.
For Giovanni Orsina, who heads the political science department at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome, Trump is unlikely to be persuaded by Meloni. A change in policy would require the US president, whose aggressive trade policy has isolated him internationally, to conclude that keeping the EU as a staunch ally amid a deepening trade war with China would be in America’s interest, he argued.
“If he backs down on tariffs, he won’t do so because Meloni asked for it. But because he thinks he has an advantage doing so,” he said.
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