If you’ve been wondering where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been while President Trump unleashed a tariff tantrum threatening to kneecap the economy of the EU, you were not alone.
The answer seems to be, ‘everywhere but where she was needed’.
Von der Leyen, the EU’s top bureaucrat and self-proclaimed defender of multilateralism, was spotted waxing poetic about ‘global cooperation’ in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
In the meantime, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – yes, that Meloni – was left holding the trade-war grenade Trump lobbed at Europe.
The irony?
Meloni, once a loyal foot soldier in von der Leyen’s re-election campaign, is now doing the job the Commission President was elected for. And she’s doing it with all the enthusiasm of someone who just realized they’ve been handed a ticking time bomb.
Meloni’s April 17 meeting with Trump was less a negotiation than a high-stakes charm offensive. Flanked by chandeliers and mutual admiration, the two leaders bonded over their shared disdain of ‘woke ideology’ and a vision of ‘Western nationalism’ – a term Meloni coined to bridge their civilizational grievances.
Trump, ever the flatterer, praised her as a ‘fantastic woman’ who’s ‘taken Europe by storm’, while Meloni leaned into her role as Europe’s designated ‘Trump whisperer’.
Though President Trump started a trade war against Europe (and the whole world), there is no publicly available information confirming that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has had at a least a direct phone call with him regarding trade tariffs or about the future of transatlantic relations.
She fully left it to Meloni to represent the EU’s interests in Washington.
Meloni passed with flying colours.
One of her key victories was, that, though no tariff rollbacks were announced (yet), she extracted a commitment from Trump to pursue a ‘fair deal’ with the EU, buying time for Brussels to avoid retaliatory measures.
Besides de-escalating the brewing trade war, Meloni secured Trump’s promise to visit Italy ‘in the near future’, along with plans for him to meet various European leaders. A clear blow at von der Leyen, given her repeated failed requests for a White House audience.
Meloni also managed to soften Trump’s Ukraine rhetoric as the president backtracked from blaming Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for the war. It was a minor but symbolic shift, something Meloni nudged for by emphasizing NATO’s unity and Italy’s pledge to boost defence spending to 2 percent of the GDP by June.
Last, but not least, Meloni succeeded in shielding Italy’s EUR40 billion trade surplus with the U.S. by touting niche exports (think prosecco or Parmigiano Reggiano) as ‘irreplaceable’ and securing nods for increased LNG imports and tech investments.
But let’s rewind just a bit.
In 2024, Meloni threw her political capital behind von der Leyen’s bid for a second term, betting that loyalty would buy Italy a seat at the big boys’ table.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
Fast forward to 2025 and Meloni is now single-handedly juggling Trump’s tariff threats, EU infighting and a French government hyperventilating into a paper bag. All the while von der Leyen jets off to Central Asia to discuss … partnerships? Energy security? Or maybe the weather?
The Commission President’s most notable contribution to the crisis so far has been a statement from Samarkand, expressing that she ‘deeply regretted’ Trump’s ‘universal tariffs’ and vowed to ‘respond with countermeasures’.
Meanwhile, Meloni, who once built her brand on anti-EU populism, suddenly became the adult in the room, urging ‘dialogue’ with Washington (and quietly preparing retaliatory measures). ‘We will strive for a deal, but we are ready to respond’, the prime minister said, sounding more like a seasoned diplomat than the firebrand who once threatened to sink EU migration reforms.
The Italian PM’s sudden pivot to crisis manager is as baffling as it is ironic.
Once dismissed by Brussels elites as a far-right loose cannon, Meloni now finds herself cleaning up von der Leyen’s mess. The Commission’s ‘countermeasures’ against Trump’s tariffs, like a proposed EUR26 billion in retaliatory duties on American goods, have been criticized as both ‘too little’ and ‘too late’. French officials, ever the optimists, hint that more measures targeting U.S. tech and pharma giants could drop by month’s end. But with the EU importing far more from the U.S. than it exports, Meloni knows that the bloc’s leverage is thinner than von der Leyen’s excuses.
In the meantime, von der Leyen’s signature ‘Compatitiveness Compass’, a grand plan to boost European innovation, is gathering dust. This January, her speech in Davos touted a ‘race against time’ to modernize Europe, but her current race seem to be a … well, it’s just disappearing.
In an almost Shakespearean twist, the woman who built her career rallying against EU overreach is now its reluctant saviour. Meloni, once the poster child for Euroskepticism, is stitching together a coalition to shield Europe from Trump’s wrath, while von der Leyen, ever the stalwart institutionalists, is … somewhere else.
One could claim that Meloni succeeded where von der Leyen failed due to her ideological alignment with Trump as they share a playbook on migration, ‘traditional values’ and scepticism of multilateralism. A rapport von der Leyen could never replicate.
But there is more.
While Macron, Starmer and von der Leyen were hellbent on lecturing Trump, Meloni mastered the ‘Art of the Flatter’ and the ‘MAGA lexicon’, even echoing his ‘Make the West Great Again’ slogan.
And, as a final master stroke, Meloni understood that in times like this, only economic realpolitik could save Italy’s at risk exports to the U.S. Even if it means prioritizing backroom deals over ‘outraged performances’.
The theatrical version of the drama would maybe end with von der Leyen considering a new motto for her tenure, something along the line ‘out of office, out of mind’ and Meloni drafting a resignation letter in von der Leyen’s name at the same time with billing the EU for therapy sessions.
In the real life, in true EU fashion, things are likely to remain unchanged in Brussels. President Trump will fly to Rome, where he’ll dine Meloni’s ‘cacio e pepe’ and ponder how a far-right nationalist became the EU’s last best hope.
