Giorgia Meloni briefed US President Joe Biden on her plan to curb Italy’s reliance on China and to establish balanced ties with the Asian country, as she mulls a strategy to disentangle from a controversial investment pact.
“If you think that the US demands or imposes the policy on this, you are wrong. The conversation is broad and involves all G-7 countries and it is about de-risking from supply chain dependence on China, which is a priority,” the prime minister told reporters after a meeting at the Oval Office with Biden on Thursday. “The US knows we are trustworthy.”
Meloni added that a decision on the Belt and Road Initiative pact will be taken by the end of the year. “It is crucial to keep a constructive dialog open with Beijing,” she said.
The most far-right leader to visit the White House in years has been working on a delicate choreography to reshape diplomatic relations with China. Officials in Rome have been privately reassuring the US that Italy will exit the investment pact with China, which made the country an outlier in the Group of Seven nations, of which Italy will take the presidency next year.
Bloomberg reported earlier this week about Meloni’s plan to not go public on her decision to pull out during the short trip to Washington. Meloni said Thursday she is planning to visit China.
Italy signed up to Belt and Road in 2019 under China-friendly premier Giuseppe Conte. The pact, due to renew automatically at the end of the year if no action is taken, has posed persistent questions about where Rome’s loyalty lies.
For months, Meloni has been trying to work out how to wriggle out of the commitment without provoking retaliation from Beijing.
An invitation to the White House is a routine courtesy for Italian prime ministers, and Biden already hosted Meloni’s predecessor Mario Draghi. But for Meloni the visit was an opportunity for assertiveness, especially on China and on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two areas on which Italy has sometimes been seen as soft.
While Meloni has never wavered on her support for Ukraine, her coalition partners — the anti-immigrant League and the center-right Forza Italia — have in the past cultivated friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Earlier, Biden said he and Meloni also planned to discuss “legitimate migration challenges” stemming from Africa, as well as space cooperation.
Both Biden and Meloni have struggled to reconcile their migration policies with campaign rhetoric, though they have come at the issue from opposite sides of the political spectrum.
While the US president indicated he would lift immigration restrictions enacted under his predecessor ex-President Donald Trump upon entering office, he’s been criticized for imposing new rules that make it tougher for undocumented migrants to claim asylum. Meloni was elected on a hardline immigration platform but has since softened her stance.
--With assistance from John Follain.
(Updates with Meloni remarks from second paragraph)
