“Our goal is zero reciprocal tariffs,” said Tajani in an interview with the newspaper La Nazione, also published on the official website of the Italian Foreign Ministry, and also referred to ‘the prospect of having a large transatlantic market, something that was already being talked about a decade ago’.

The Italian Minister stated that, in this way, it will be possible to ‘make the West a great opportunity for all those who take the path’, and advanced that, as an intermediate objective, the first step in this sense would be to negotiate with the US government so that it reduces from 20 to 10 percent its tariffs on European products.

The foreign minister also assured that in the EU there is currently ‘unity in a clear political line: to deal with the US and avoid a trade war’ to ‘reach zero tariffs’ as soon as possible.

Tajani asserted that the European Commission is negotiating, but Italy can help to facilitate those talks and convince Trump, given the positive relations between the two governments.

From April 15, the EU will impose tariffs on some US products, included in a list that was kept frozen since 2018, the senior official announced and specified that ‘we have managed to protect also some Italian interests’ by removing whiskey to avoid a backlash against wines.

Such tariffs from the Union “will be lower than those we have suffered, precisely to make it clear that we do not want a trade war” he added, and although he exposed the possibility of the list being extended, he clarified that ‘there will always be time for negotiation’.

In Italy ‘we will not leave companies without support’, and there is a battery of possible interventions to help them, while “we already have an Action Plan, which we presented in recent days, to strengthen our presence in non-European markets,” reaffirmed the also deputy prime minister of this country.

This plan seeks to accelerate exports to non-EU markets, and is aimed at expanding the promotional effort towards them, with particular emphasis on the 14 main alternative commercial destinations, identified as those with the greatest potential to assimilate Italian products.

These markets include Mexico and the countries of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) in Latin America, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as African and Balkan nations.

In the face of the tariffs imposed by Washington on the EU, “we must defend our interests and our business and we will do so,” Tajani emphasized.

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