The announcement from the Rose Garden of the White House. After weeks of threats, reverse and promises, Donald Trump, at 4 pm (10 pm tonight in Italy) will present his strategy on duties to the worldthat the US president defines the ‘liberation day’. The taxes will enter “in force immediately,” said the spokesman for the White House Karoline Leavitt in a very crowded press conference. “It will be among the most important days of modern American history,” he added.
Trump’s plan is still nebulous, and this is one of the various reasons of great nervousness of the markets. What seems certain is that the duties that will enter into force on goods imported from the rest of the world in the United States will be mutual and will have immediate effect. An option to the examination of the White House, according to different sources, is a fixed fee of 20 percent on all imports, which according to US consultants could bring to the Washington government coffers 6 trillion dollars of revenue. The day after tomorrow should be the shift of the duties of 25% on cars and the car components made abroad. No other detail is certainly reported and Trump himself will provide details.
In addition to mutual duties for countries, Trump could reveal further specific taxes for sector, such as those on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors. Taxes could affect 15% of the partners who have persistent commercial imbalances with the United States, the group that the US Treasury Secretary Scott Beesent has nicknamed of “Dirty 15”, such as China, Mexico, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Canada, India and the European Union itself.
But Europe has a “strong plan” to react to the duties imposed by Donald Trump, said the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
«Europe has not started this comparison. We don’t necessarily want to react, we would like to negotiate. But if necessary we have a strong plan to react and we will use it, “he added. Italy also fears the storm and the same majority is divided, with the vice -premier Antonio Tajani who asks “calm” to “carry on a negotiation with a straight back” at the EU level, while Matteo Salvini attacks Von der Leyen: “Reveal and open commercial wars does not make anyone’s interests”, says the League leader.
Certainly Trump’s commercial policy that will be revealed today, is feeding on recession in the United States. Goldman Sachs analysts have increased the probability of recession 12 months from 20% to 35%. According to a Moody’s simulation, universal duties of 20% and a complete retaliation by other nations on US goods would cost 5.5 million jobs in America, would make US unemployment rate rise to 7% and would drop the US GDP of 1.7%.
The invitation to all its interlocutors is always the same, “we must avoid feeding an escalation of duties against duties, because everyone would pay the expenses”. Giorgia Meloni does not change line In the hours preceding what to the White House call “a historical day”. The impact of Donald Trump’s announcements will be clear only once the American president has made official commercial rates for foreign products. In the meantime, they prefer not to comment on Washington’s warnings from Palazzo Chigi nor the words of Ursula von der Leyen, on European responses.
Certainly the theme will end up at the center of the meeting, still not on the agenda, that the premier is ready to have with the Vice -President of the United States JD Vance, who scheduled a visit to Rome on Easter days, between 18 and 20 April. In the previous days, among other things, Meloni should see Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expected in the capital for the Italy-Turkey intergovernmental summit of 16-17, a meeting that could also be relevant on the Ukrainian dossier. Meanwhile, the focus in these hours is on the duties. The hope, cultivated for a long time on the high floors of the government, that the US could make exceptions has broken on reality. Some hope of exemptions on wine still resists. “Maybe Trump only affects champagne …”try to joke a Melonian, mistaking the awareness widespread in the executive that the rates will be for all and heavy. Once the actual impact on the economy is evaluated, you can try to change the scenario by dealing with the American administration, it is Meloni’s belief, focusing on dialogue and diplomacy. Not bilaterally, as the League hoped for, but in a European frame.
In this perspective, two elements are read by its loyalists as credit openings: the placet of the EU Commission to the changes on the CPRs in Albania and, even before, Saturday’s interview with Corriere della Sera, in which Von der Leyen recognized the premier “a very important role at European level”, defining “positive” the fact that he has “a direct relationship” with Trump with Trump: “The more bonds there are between the two banks of the Atlantic, the better”.
The last words of the German leader, who announced the hard European answer, instead went through Matteo Salvini. “Opening commercial wars with the USA – he warns – is an unhappy choice, it does not make anyone’s interest”. The other vice premier, Antonio Tajani, clarifies that “we must not bend our heads, but not even being anti -American”. And that “Italy cannot do it, it is EU competence, Europe does the duties”. Between Fi and Lega, although the truce is holding, it is always frost. The tensions of the last few months risk leaving scars on the government, where there is also a growing annoyance of melons on the League punctualizations on foreign policy. So in a decidedly delicate moment, the government horizon seems to be reduced to spring 2026, according to the increasingly insistent reasoning that are majority.
Beyond Salvini’s reassurances (“We will arrive at 2027, we put the soul in peace anyone”), and the blues who shrug (“we do not create any risk”), the conviction widespread in the coalition is that we should make ourselves ready for the elections even in a year. With the hope that an even stronger center -right in Parliament can also manage the subsequent match for the election of the Head of State, in 2029 In the center -right there is no great optimism. And these evaluations are accompanied by the awareness that, however stable and longeated like this, a government hardly arrives at the end of the mandate with an intact consensus. We then look carefully at the polls. And Meloni’s commitments this week in Limbadi, Calabria, and L’Aquila, are read by many, even in his party, such as the start of a strategy to feel the squares.