With each new statement by Donald Trump, a question grows in Europe, and in Italy in particular: how useful can an American leader who is so unpredictable, aggressive and often hostile to European interests really be to the Italian right?

There is one fact that is still hard to accept in Italy: the American right wing of Donald Trump and the Italian right wing of Giorgia Meloni are not two variants of the same political family, but two different worlds, driven by different interests, which only intersect on the surface and diverge radically in substance.

The common idea is that Trump and Giorgia Meloni are very similar, as they are both ‘sovereignist’, conservative, ‘anti-establishment’, but the reality is much more nuanced and, in some cases, even contradictory.

It is a misunderstanding that suits many, be they zealous supporters seeking reassuring international affiliations or critics who like to portray Meloni as a ‘tempered’ version of Trumpism, but which, analysed carefully, reveals a dangerous paradox: the relationship with Trump is likely to be far more beneficial for Trump himself than for Meloni.

Behind the rhetoric of political ‘closeness’, in fact, lie profound differences that could put the Italian leader in trouble, especially in view of the upcoming elections.

The fable of a global conservative bloc

For years, on the right, there has been talk of the idea of an ‘international conservative front’. A seductive narrative of strong leaders, robust national identities, traditional values, and rejection of ‘globalism’ (whatever that is), of an ‘us against them’ that promises simplicity in a complex world. But global politics doesn’t work that way.

Trump does not want an international network of conservative allies: he wants every country to play a game in which the US always wins. He is an American nationalist, not an alliance builder.

For Trump, Europe is not an ally, but an economic competitor.
For years he has been repeating that the EU ‘screws the US on trade’, that Europeans ‘don’t pay enough’ in NATO, that America must think of itself first.
Translated: more duties, less cooperation, more military pressure.

A line that, already during the first term, led to trade tensions and threats of new tariffs on European cars. For Trump, clearly, Europe is not a partner. It is a competitor.
An economic bloc that exports too much, spends too little on defence and which, in the eyes of the former president, for years has ‘taken advantage’ of the American umbrella.

In its frame of mind, the EU only works if it buys American products, buys American weapons, follows American political priorities. Certainly not if it seeks its own autonomy.

And Italy?

For our country, the return of US protectionism represents a very hard blow: from electrical appliances to fashion, from mechanics to agricultural products, a large part of Italian exports to the United States is already at risk.
And this represents a gigantic problem for Meloni’s Italy, which in the last three years has established itself in Europe precisely by focusing on credibility, stability and constant dialogue with Brussels.

Trump speaks for America and for America. His sovereignism means: ‘US first ‘, ‘American economy first’, ‘American jobs first’.

An approach that does nothing to help European governments that call themselves sovereignists; on the contrary, it puts them in direct competition with the overseas giant.

Meloni: institutional, Atlanticist, pro-EU. The opposite of Trumpism

There is a distance that many pretend not to see. Giorgia Meloni, as prime minister, has chosen a precise and institutional international positioning: decisive defence of Ukraine, convinced adhesion to NATO, axis with the EU Commission and solid relations with the other important European governments, paradoxically more with Macron than with Orban, with whom she still shares some legacies of a now anachronistic right wing, but certainly not the role of Putin Trojan horse in Europe.
A posture of a reliable leader, not a political incendiary.

Trump, on the contrary, undermines exactly those pillars on which Italy is trying to build its credibility: he threatens NATO allies ‘who do not pay enough’, he hypothesises leaving Europe alone against Russia, he attacks the EU with bellicose tones and now fears with the absolute levity that is his own, the extinction of European civilisation, he communicates to induce shock, not stability.

Anyone familiar with international diplomacy knows this: these two positions cannot be reconciled, even more so if we consider the positions of the two ‘friends’ on Ukraine.

Even in political communication, the distances are much wider than one might imagine: Trump communicates by attacking, from the media to his opponents, from American institutions to his own allies. It is a permanent conflict, a continuous mobilisation of the most radical base.

Meloni chose another path, made up of more institutional tones, a desire not to split the country and an attempt to be respected in international fora.

An excessive proximity to Trump would risk dragging her into a communication pattern that could penalise her both in Europe and among moderate Italian voters.

There are at least three risks for the Italian premier: economic-industrial, political and geopolitical.

The first is the return to US tariffs and protectionism, which is already directly damaging Italian exports. Moreover, Trump is pushing his allies to buy more American weapons, but Italy (as well as Europe) is trying to develop its own military-industrial autonomy.

On the political front, on the other hand, the conservative electorate in Italy is not identical to the Trumpian electorate and an overexposure with the former US president could alienate moderates, businesses and pro-European voters.
On the international front and geopolitical balances, if Trump reduces, as is now certified, support for NATO, Italy would remain more exposed to tensions in the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Black Sea.

Every time Trump opens his mouth, he helps a Meloni opponent

There is also a surprisingly underestimated aspect in the Italian public debate: Trump’s policies and statements are, in fact, functional to the political forces that oppose the centre-right model represented by Meloni.

Paradoxically, Trump offers communicative and political ammunition to both the antagonistic left and the pro-Putin right.

Limited to the antagonistic, European and Italian left, every time the US president attacks the EU, NATO or allied liberal democracies, he radicalises the debate and makes it easier to present conservatism as a reactionary, destabilising, anti-European threat.
A narrative gift to the hard left, which can reinforce the ‘us pro-Europeans versus them sovereignists’ opposition , weakening the governmental and institutional image that Meloni is trying to build.

At the same time, Trump’s ambiguities on Russia and the war in Ukraine end up fuelling conservative forces that look sympathetically towards the Kremlin.
These are forces that often compete with Fratelli d’Italia and many European conservative families – from the radical sovereignist galaxy to some Eastern European parties – that use Trump as aesthetic and geopolitical legitimisation for more extremist and anti-European positions.

Trump, with his muscular and divisive positions, ends up strengthening the extremes and weakening the conservative moderates.
The opposite of what a government that wants to last, consolidate and govern a large European country needs.

Trumpcan hurt Meloni more than he can help her

If Meloni is working to present herself as a responsible European leader, Trump represents the exact opposite: a chaos factor, a political detonator, a crisis multiplier.

The apparent ideological affinity, which so pleases a certain narrative, risks being an enormous burden for the Italian government, which thus, by jeopardising exports, relations with Brussels, Atlantic stability, and the international credibility it has painstakingly built, risks losing the more moderate domestic consensus.

If Trump has only to gain from symbolic European support, Meloni, on the other hand, has everything to lose: in the next Italian elections, an overly leading Trump could become a destabilising factor rather than an ally.

Meloni knows this well. That is why she has chosen a cautious approach of public friendliness but strategic distance. A subtle balance, which could, however, break down if American politics were to take – once again – the wall-to-wall road mapped out by Donald Trump.

The most celebrated alliance of the contemporary right, in short, risks being a one-way alliance. And in politics, especially in times like these, one-way alliances are the most dangerous of all.

Who knows how many times, after the right-wing ‘God, country, family’ leader Giorgia Meloni cheered Trump’s victory, the Giorgia Meloni Prime Minister of one of the founding nations of the European Union and a member of the G7, must have wondered how much easier it would have been on tariffs, NATO, Ukraine and the Middle East, if that woman had ended up in the White House, a bit too ‘woke’ for her, but at least with all the political (and other) categories in her head.

An all-Italian impasse

If Sparta cries, Athens does not laugh. And if Meloni’s attraction to Trump may risk proving fatal for the Italian prime minister and for a centre-right that has ambitions of an encore at the 2027 elections, the Italian left risks seeing any prospect of contestability of the country’s government fade away by borrowing the positions, as a coalition political programme, as opposed to Trumpism as they are extreme, of the shouting squares, all too often violent in tone and manner, to which the Frankensteinian and vast Campolarghesque leadership responds ever more tepidly, taking care not to condemn the new ‘comrades who make mistakes’. But this will be the subject of a future instalment.