ATHENS, Greece — Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told Breitbart News exclusively in an interview in his office here he believes Europe can reach a “win-win” trade deal with American President Donald Trump that is “mutually beneficial” for the United States and the European Union.
Mitsotakis’s comments come as the EU has just launched new trade actions with regard to the United States. The actions, which focus on steel and aluminum, were mostly planned prior to Trump’s worldwide tariff rollout last week. The muted response from Europe is a sharp contrast with China, which escalated quickly against Trump’s tariffs prompting the U.S. to respond in kind with further actions targeting Beijing—and then China to raise tariffs again back at the U.S. Europe’s response also did not tariff bourbon imports from the U.S., after Trump threatened a massive response on any European alcohol imports to the U.S. if Europe went down that road.
“There is a European message and then there is a Greek message,” Mitsotakis told Breitbart News when asked for his message to Trump during a half-hour-long interview in his office at Maximos Mansion in Greece’s capital, Athens. “On the European front there is a possibility of finding a win-win solution when it comes to trade, a solution which will be mutually beneficial. Τhis was my firm belief from the beginning, before tariffs were announced. There is still room for negotiations before we consider any major reciprocal response beyond what has been announced today, which, anyhow, was, the expected EU reaction. I think, at the end of the day, Europe and the European market is very important for the U.S. and U.S. is important for Europe and we need to work out a solution.”
Mitsotakis’s interview with Breitbart News sends a signal from Europe that European leaders want to work with Trump and it seems as though a broader realization is settling in across the continent that the real target of Trump’s actions appears to be China. Mitsotakis’s interview also comes after EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had publicly offered earlier this week to drop European tariffs on American industrial goods to zero if the U.S. did the same—one of many world leaders like those in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere to signal a willingness to work with Trump rather than against him. The White House has regularly highlighted these countries reaching out and offering to negotiate with the American president as a way to show progress after Trump’s announcement, and also to try to ease market tensions as Wall Street has been rocked by the moves from Washington since last week.
When it comes to a Greek-specific message, Mitsotakis told Breitbart News he considers the United States to be a key strategic partner of the Hellenic Republic and mentioned specifically the IMEEC corridor which is a trade corridor deal that Trump has signed with a number of countries including India, Middle Eastern nations, and European nations. IMEEC, which stands for India-Middle East-Europe-Economic Corridor, is viewed by many in the west as a U.S.-led counter to the Chinese Communist Party’s Belt and Road Initiative. Mitsotakis framed the IMEEC corridor as one connecting the world’s biggest democracy in India on one side, the world’s most powerful democracy in the United States on the other, and bridged in the middle by the birthplace of democracy right here in Athens where ancient leaders first tested the form of government that would dominate the west for millennia.
“As far as Greece is concerned, we have a strategic partnership with the US,” Mitsotakis said. “And when I look at IMEEC, Greece, the birthplace of democracy, can be the bridge between the world΄s largest democracy and the most powerful, strongest democracy. For geopolitical, economic reasons, Greece in an important ally to the U.S. I have worked with President Trump before and I can work very well with him again addressing regional challenges.”
IMEEC is certain to be a major topic of conversation at the upcoming Delphi Economic Forum in world historic Delphi, Greece, which begins on Wednesday and continues through Saturday. That’s why Breitbart News is in Greece, as this journalist will moderate and participate in several panel and interview discussions at the annual gathering focused on Trump and trade policy as well as the president’s broader vision for peace throughout the world as he seeks to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza while expanding the Abraham Accords in the Middle East—a signature accomplishment of Trump’s first term.
Trump himself has spoken very highly of IMEEC, and recently told Breitbart News just a few weeks ago in an exclusive interview at the White House that the deal represented a “group of wonderful nations” banding together “countering other countries that look to hurt us on trade.” The president did not specifically mention China by name in those comments in the interview with Breitbart News, but the implication was clear. Trump also made clear that the U.S. can do great things geopolitically on trade with such partners in the IMEEC deal and beyond that in future prospective deals but also called for U.S. partners like the European Union and India to be fairer to the U.S. and foreshadowed the actions he has now taken.
“We have a powerful group of partners in trade,” Trump told Breitbart News in that mid-March interview. “Again, we can’t let those partners treat us badly, however. We do better in many ways frankly with our foes than we do with our friends. The ones that wouldn’t be as friendly to us in some cases treat us better than the ones that are supposed to be friendly, like the European Union, which treats us terribly on trade. India and everybody would think of them as an ally. I can say the same for others. But this is a group of wonderful nations that is countering other countries that look to hurt us on trade.”
Mitsotakis leads the center-right New Democracy party here in Greece and has served as prime minister since his electoral victory in 2019, so he worked with Trump before back during Trump’s first term and the two have an existing relationship dating back years. After his 2019 victory, Mitsotakis implemented strict border and migration controls in Greece which ran counter to much of the conventional wisdom among Europe’s elected leadership at the time and fit much more closely with Trump’s vision on migration—something that he argued helped steer the continent away from a more globalist and open borders Europe toward stricter migration controls.
“Greece is at the forefront of migration, a front-line country,” Mitsotakis told Breitbart News. “We followed a tough but fair migration policy and I was the first to push for border protection. When we started this policy in 2020 we were the exception in the EU, the outliers. Now everyone in Europe understands the importance of border protection. It is not up to the smugglers to decide who enters Greece. I am unapologetically tough when it comes to border protection and open when it comes to legal migration.”
Greece also has economically rebounded from economic crises from before Mitsotakis’s tenure in large part thanks to his conservative economic policies. Mitsotakis told Breitbart News that these are in line with Trump’s economic vision of cutting taxes and regulations to generate economic growth.
“We have made a remarkable comeback after the economic crisis, following a strategy of cutting taxes and red tape, a pro-investment and pro-deregulation economic policy supporting the creation of jobs,” Mitsotakis said.
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