A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump's trade war is causing tension between the U.S. and Europe. Yesterday, Trump hosted Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House for a discussion on trade. She's the first European leader to meet with Trump since the tariffs were announced. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram joins us now to talk through that meeting. So, Deepa, how did the meeting go?
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Well, hey, Meloni went into it already having a pretty close relationship with Trump. They've met a few times before in Florida in - for example, in one of the places, and Meloni is the leader of the far-right party in Italy. She was the only leader to attend Trump's inauguration this year. And despite the fact that Meloni originally criticized the tariffs that Trump imposed, I will say, yesterday, she was quick to compliment Trump and point out their shared commitments on fighting things like illegal immigration and, quote, "woke ideology." But, you know, on tariffs, she borrowed Trump's phrase and said she wants to, quote, "make the West great again," and said she wants to find solutions for both sides of the Atlantic on trade because the U.S. and European economies are so interconnected. And Trump, for his part, said he was 100% certain that they could reach a deal.
MARTÍNEZ: OK, but we still don't know what a deal or a meeting in the middle would look or sound like.
SHIVARAM: Yeah, there's not really a sense of what the deal they're talking about will actually look like - the details of it. But, you know, as a reminder, after the initial tariffs were announced, Trump then put a 90-day pause on most of them. So where things stand right now is that all countries except China are facing a flat 10% tariff. China, meanwhile, is still sitting at a tariff of over 145%. And now Trump says that other countries want to make deals with the U.S., but he's also said that it's the U.S. that's going to set the deal. And here he is speaking from the Oval Office alongside Prime Minister Meloni yesterday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Everybody wants to make a deal. And if they don't want to make a deal, we'll make the deal for them 'cause that's what's going to happen. We'll just say, this is what it is.
SHIVARAM: It's not just Italy that Trump has been talking to. He says he's met with leaders from Japan earlier this week. He had a call with the president of Mexico. The White House also said there were conversations with the EU, and there would be upcoming meetings with India and South Korea next week. Trump also said, interestingly, that he's been in talks with Chinese leaders about tariffs, but he didn't specify if he had directly spoken with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Has President Trump, though, given any sense at all of a timeline on how long these negotiations are going to take place?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. Yesterday, he did kind of put a number on it. He said he thinks it could all get wrapped up in the next three to four weeks as the U.S. aims to make these deals with impacted countries, including China, which has imposed a retaliatory 125% tariff back onto the U.S. In the meantime, though, Trump's trade war has caused a lot of uncertainty and up and down in the market. Economists, of course, say the cost of a trade war will be a burden on consumers. Trump, though, appears to be doubling down. He waved off concerns when reporters asked about prices going up for consumers, and he said that tariffs are making the U.S. rich.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram. We'll check back in with you when this story progresses. Thanks.
SHIVARAM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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