The US president says prospect of a trade deal with the EU is ‘100 percent’, praising the Italian prime minister as ‘fantastic’.
US President Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have expressed optimism about a possible United States-European Union tariffs deal as the two leaders met at the White House, as economic uncertainly roils the market.
Meloni has cast herself as the only European who can de-escalate Trump’s trade war, and she has highlighted their conservative common ground, declaring that she wants to “make the West great again.”
“There will be a trade deal, 100 percent,” Trump declared on Thursday, while Meloni said she was “sure” they could reach a deal.
The two leaders struck a warm tone during a working lunch and a meeting in the Oval Office, with Trump hailing the 48-year-old Italian leader as “fantastic”.
‘Banking on Meloni’
Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from the White House, said European leaders “are banking on Meloni” to make the bloc’s message to Trump “sound a little bit better”.
Meloni is the first European leader to visit the Republican since he slapped 20 percent tariffs on EU exports, which he has since suspended for 90 days.
The Italian leader said Trump had accepted an invitation to visit Rome in the “near future” and that he might also meet European leaders there.
“Even if we have some problems between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is the time that we try to sit down and find solutions,” she said.
Meloni highlighted their shared views on immigration and “woke” ideology and added: “The goal for me is to make the West great again, and I think we can do it together.”
But while Trump expressed confidence about an eventual deal with the 27-nation bloc he has accused of trying to take advantage of the US, he said he was in “no rush”.
“Everybody wants to make a deal – and if they don’t want to make a deal, we’ll make the deal for them,” Trump added.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Federiga Bindi, professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, said that Meloni is in a challenging position balancing the interest of Italian voters while also trying to please the whole European bloc.
“I think Meloni is trying to apply the lessons from [former Italian Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi. Just like she is today, he was an outcast of European politics. [Berlusconi] leveraged his relationship with George W Bush,” Bindi explained.
“Berlusconi managed to pull it. I am not sure if Meloni can manage to pull it [with Trump]. What’s different is that Berlusconi had a real friendship with Bush, which is pretty impossible to have with Trump.”
‘Get smart’
Trump repeated his criticisms of Europe, saying it needed to “get smart” on immigration and boost defence spending on NATO.
Russia’s war in Ukraine also remained a touchy subject, with Trump telling Meloni that he was “not a big fan” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Meloni has been a staunch ally of Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, most recently calling Moscow’s attack on the city of Sumy “horrible and vile”.