Rome, Italy – The right-wing Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni will be in Washington on Thursday for a meeting with US president Donald Trump. News agencies agree that the visit will focus particularly on the tariff dispute between the United States and the European Union.

Tensions have eased somewhat since the trip was first announced. The EU paused retaliatory tariffs on steel and aluminium after Donald Trump announced a 90-day suspension of 20% tariffs on the EU.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said the stay on tariffs is in order to give negotiations with the US a chance.

Meloni wants to talk tariffs

Despite the current detente, Teresa Coratella, the deputy head of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) office in Rome, anticipates that Meloni’s main goal is still to negotiate tariffs.

Coratella, as well as Leo Goretti from the Italian Institute of International Affairs (IAI), expect Meloni will try to use her apparent good relationship with Donald Trump to find a solution to the EU-US tariff conflict.

Meloni was the only European head of government to attend Trump’s inauguration in January. Earlier that month, when Meloni visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, he praised her as a ‘fantastic woman’. In recent months, Italian sources have often stressed that the Italian government wants to act as a ‘bridge’ between the US and the EU.

What is Meloni’s approach?

Ahead of her trip, Giorgia Meloni told business leaders that she supported a European Commission proposal for zero tariffs between the US and the EU. The Reuters news agency, citing a draft speech, said she would adhere to this position on her visit to Washington.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has often endorsed a zero-for-zero tariff agreement between the EU and US, most recently in a post on X last week.

However, Leo Goretti, the head of the Italian foreign policy programme at the IAI, calls Meloni’s approach to the US a ‘gamble’.

“However close ideologically (Meloni) may be to Trump, she can’t align with the US against Brussels,” Goretti said.

Italy, he added, can’t afford to break away from the EU, especially not economically.

Giorgia Meloni, who heads the right-wing party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), is under pressure from domestic economic interests.

In 2024, Italy had a surplus of nearly €40bn (US$45.5bn) on trade in goods with the US – the third-highest in the EU, after Germany and Ireland. A total of 10% of all Italian exports go to the US.

But the US market is still much less important for the Italian economy than the EU single market, Goretti stressed.

Does Meloni speak for the EU?

Brussels has repeatedly emphasised that negotiating tariffs is fundamentally the responsibility of the European Commission.

EU spokesperson Arianna Podesta said that, in light of the upcoming trip, there had been contact in recent days between EU Commission president Von der Leyen and Italian Prime Minister Meloni. Further communication is planned before Meloni’s departure, and Podesta described her outreach as ‘very welcome and closely coordinated’.

EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic also visited Washington this week. After the meeting, Sefcovic stressed that the EU was willing to work toward a ‘fair deal’, including the offer of zero tariffs on industrial goods. He noted in a post on X that such an agreement would require a ‘significant joint effort on both sides’.

What can Meloni achieve?

Leo Goretti believes that, for the EU, much will depend on how Meloni positions herself in Washington. He points out that she vacillates between advocating the zero-tariff policy and criticising the EU.

If she sticks to the zero-tariff line, this will be well received in Brussels and by other member states.

If, on the other hand, she criticises the EU and shifts the focus of the discussion to internal issues, such as excessive bureaucracy and overregulation, it will send a negative signal to Brussels.

Goretti is sceptical about whether Meloni will achieve any concrete results in Washington, but he believes one possible outcome could be a statement pointing toward a common transatlantic market.

This could include aligning against common challenges, such as those posed by China.

Political scientist Teresa Coratella is even more sceptical.

Meloni has no official mandate from the EU Commission, she said, and thinks that France in particular, isn’t happy about the visit.

Coratella thinks it likely that Meloni’s trip will be carefully staged, and publicly presented as a big show of alignment with Trump.

This, however, would make Meloni’s position within the EU more difficult, Coratella said.

DW