Yesterday’s meeting at the White House was objectively difficult for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

It could not irritate the host, nor break a political friendship cemented by years of ideological convergence that is as dangerous as it is irrevocable, because it constitutes the body and soul of the Italian sovereignist right.

Hence Meloni’s predictable alignment on anti-Woke and anti-migratory rhetoric, which, however, in Trumpism is not a revolution of common sense and good governance at all, but a patchwork of discriminatory instances: a reactionary and racist counter-Wokeism.

On the other hand, Meloni could not appear in the eyes of the other European leaders to be just another Orban, that is, a mere figurehead of the Maga party, infiltrated into the heart of the continent’s institutions. She could not, again, due to objective constraints before subjective unwillingness, given that breaking with the EU, on which for a thousand reasons Italy is more dependent than the United States, is only possible in a ‘murder-suicide’ logic. A strategy cherished by the nihilists of the League, but completely self-defeating for Meloni.

So in the end Meloni managed to hold her own, thanks also to the generosity of the host, who evidently did not want to put her in too much difficulty, which would have been foolish because Meloni remains his most solid and relevant side in enemy Europe and also the most willing to let him rave, pretending not to hear what he is saying and seeing a glass that is always more half-full than it is.

For Meloni, yesterday’s meeting was undoubtedly positive. She strengthened herself with respect to the supertrumpian components of her majority, she kept the point on Ukraine – which is important because, contrary to what the majority of right-wing voters and elected representatives think, Ukraine’s fate is, no more and no less, that of Europe – and she proposed herself and was recognised as a mediator between the White House and Brussels, without seeking separate and more favourable trade agreements for Italy (which is impossible within the European customs union anyway).

However, the fact remains that the idea of finding a fair middle between America’s demands and the interests of Europe and free international trade has no political substance, since Trump’s tariff war is not the end, but the means of another, far more total war on the Western economic order and the White House’s demand is not to lower European trade barriers, but to collect a pizzo, i.e. to obtain an international subsidy as payment for the protective service provided by the US to the global trading system.

Nothing positive or different than expected yesterday’s meeting held on the American side. While Trump received Meloni, the US voted at the UN with Russia, Belarus and a handful of Central American, Asian and African tyrannies against a resolution for the promotion of human rights and democracy, and the American mediator Witkoff, having failed to reach a truce that had long been announced but never materialised, continued to work on a peace agreement based on two points that were inalienable for Moscow and unacceptable for Kyiv: the annexation to Russia of the occupied territories and the disarmament and neutrality of Ukraine. On tariffs and the White House’s economic strategy, no news either, except for the opening of a war against Fed chief Powell, who also ended up on the firing list.

We will see if today Vance, after Trump’s courtesies, will play bad cop and arrive in Italy with a baggage of more explicit threats. But yesterday’s outcome does not in fact mark any positive step forward, neither for Italy nor for Europe.