Published on Bloomberg.com
On March 31, 2025
Giorgia Meloni had hoped a line in to Donald Trump would consolidate her position at the center of European politics.
The Italian prime minister was the only European leader to attend Trump’s January inauguration. She also met with the president in Mar-a-Lago, had close ties to Elon Musk and said she was expecting a visit to the White House.
Her idea, according to officials familiar with her thinking, had been to use that trip to secure at least a partial carve out from US tariffs on imports from the European Union. But a firm date still hasn’t materialized, the officials said.
Last Wednesday, Italian carmakers’ $3.3 billion of US sales were hit by the same 25% levies as those in the rest of the EU. The next wave of US tariffs, due to be announced this week, could be far more damaging to the country’s economy and to a prime minister who is suddenly looking under pressure. A spokesperson for the Italian government declined to comment.
After almost two and a half years in power, her governing coalition has been hit by its most serious bout of public feuding. The EU push for concrete commitments on defense spending and support for Ukraine has underlined the financial limits that have hampered Italian leaders for years. And the unraveling of the transatlantic relationship means that rather than forming a bridge, she most likely has to pick sides.
She has insisted that’s not the case. But sticking to her course risks a loss of influence for the Italian leader on the international stage and it’s already putting some strain on her government.
“Her balancing act is beginning to show its price,” said Beniamino Irdi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former Italian government official. “The pressure Meloni faces both abroad and at home is a backlash from her attempt to bridge a transatlantic gap that proved too wide.”
Meloni and her staff are hugely concerned about Trump’s behavior, according to Italian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. She has been scrupulous about avoiding any public criticism of the US president and anything she says on trade or the push for peace in Ukraine is carefully calibrated so as not to antagonize the White House.
All the same, Italian carmakers such as Stellantis NV will be hit by US tariffs announced last week and supercar maker Ferrari NV said it will raise prices on some models in US. Over the weekend, the Trump administration revoked permission for Eni SpA to be paid for gas it produces in Venezuela, where the Italian energy company had about €320 million of total revenue in 2023.
France’s Emmanuel Macron, who has sustained a relationship with Trump despite their many disagreements, appears to be the European leader with the president’s ear. He speaks regularly to the US leader and debriefed him for more than half an hour after an EU summit this month, a French official said previously.
The Italian leader had positioned herself as a key player both in the EU and in relations with the US. Hosting the Group of Seven summit last year had displayed her ability to cross political divides at a time of increasing fragmentation as she was courted by leaders from all sides.
She secured a key position as vice president of the European Commission for her ally, Raffaele Fitto, when the EU appointed its new executive, despite keeping her distance from the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
Her initial dealings with Trump were promising too.
In January, she was in Mar-a-Lago just as Rome negotiated a prisoner swap with Tehran and Washington. Last month, she was invited to address CPAC, a conservative gathering held just outside Washington, where she made the case for protecting trade ties between the US and Europe.
Part of that access was built on her rapport with Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who’s become a key adviser to Trump and spoke at a rally held by Meloni’s party in 2023.
But Italy has since paused talks on a €1.5 billion deal to deploy his Starlink system for government and military communication, with Meloni telling allies that shifting geopolitics means that an alternative is required.
Meloni has tried to reach out through diplomats to open up another line into the White House, but that’s borne little fruit so far, Italian officials said, amid a broader upheaval in the way the US deals with its international partners.
“The UK and Italy can play an important role in bridge building,” Meloni said March 2 before a meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “It is very important that we avoid the risk that the west divides.”
Meloni is against sending Italian troops to Ukraine but has backed the idea of giving Kyiv NATO-like security guarantees without full membership of the alliance. That’s a proposal that Macron’s office said Thursday it is considering among many other options.
To be sure, Meloni still has a reasonable position in Europe. Her government is one of the more stable in the region and Italian bonds are trading close to their tightest spread over German bunds since the euro crisis blew up almost 15 years ago. What’s more, a major push to boost European defense spending could boost Italian industry and the state-controlled defense company Leonardo is well positioned to take advantage.
Nevertheless, her cooling relations with the White House are feeding into her troubles at home, where she’s also facing increasing indiscipline from the two vice premiers who lead her key coalition partners.
Matteo Salvini of nationalist party the League was touted as a potential prime minister himself in the past. As Meloni has dialed back her enthusiasm for Trump’s approach, Salvini, who’s long been sympathetic to Russia, has reached out to the White House in a bid to raise his own profile.
Following a call with US Vice President JD Vance this month, Salvini even floated the possibility that he might get an invite to Washington himself.
That enraged Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, of the center right Forza Italia, who called out Salvini for overstepping his remit as transport minister and dismissed the League as “blabbermouth populists.”
But Salvini is holding his ground, and says he is preparing a mission to the US with Italian companies.
On Saturday, Meloni spoke at a political event in Rome and argued that Italy needs to increase defense spending, adding a coded jab at the League, which has flip flopped on the issue and now opposes her position. “Expenditure in defense and security is the price of your freedom,” she said.
Those coalition dynamics highlight the balancing act that Meloni has to pull off — the Italian public sees the war in Ukraine as a distant problem, her EU partners are rallying support for Kyiv and the White House is pushing for a ceasefire with, apparently, little regard for the concerns of the Ukrainian government.
“It won’t be enough to try and mollify Trump by using carefully calibrated words — he is the one breaking with the alliance,” said Lia Quartapelle, a lawmaker for the opposition Democratic Party. “The tightrope Meloni is walking is getting thinner and thinner.”
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