U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Sunday said he was hopeful about “long-term trade advantages” between the European Union and the United States, in rare positive comments from the Trump administration about EU-U.S. trade.
Ahead of a meeting Sunday in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Vance called Meloni “a bridge builder” between the the European Union and the U.S.
“I think we’ll have a great conversation and hopefully it will be the beginning of some long-term trade negotiations and some long-term trade advantages between both Europe and the United States,” Vance said.
It’s the first time since President Donald Trump unleashed his global tariff war last month that a member of his administration has spoken positively in public about the prospects of advantageous American trade with the EU.
Von der Leyen stressed that “what unites us is that, at the end, we want … to have a good deal for both sides.”
So far, the Trump administration has slapped a 10 percent tariff on all imports and 25 percent duties on products like steel, aluminum, cars and car parts, all of which apply to Europe as well as other parts of the world.
Another 10 percent points of U.S. tariff on EU imports is paused until early July, but it has taken Washington until last week — almost half-way through that suspension — to present Brussels with an overview of what it hopes to achieve, which POLITICO first reported on last Wednesday.
Von der Leyen acknowledged that by adding that “it is important — now [that] we have exchanged papers — that our experts are deep diving, discussing the details.”
Trump himself has baselessly claimed the EU was created to “screw” the U.S. and said that the 27-country bloc is “nastier than China.” Officials in his administration also routinely ignore the trade surplus in services that the U.S. enjoys with Europe, which all but balances out the larger amount of goods flowing westward.
Sitting between Vance and von der Leyen, Meloni indeed seemed at ease with the idea of mediating between the two sides. When she visited Trump in the White House last month, she invited him to Italy so meet European leaders there.
“I am very proud to have the opportunity today to host two of the leaders of the United States and the European Union to begin a dialogue,” Meloni said. “We know how important our business relationships are and we are obviously here to discuss all this.”
The trilateral talk happened after the inauguration of new Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican, with Vance, a Catholic himself, confessing “the United States is very proud of him, very thrilled with him.”
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