Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has launched a scathing attack on the recent US-EU tariff agreement, branding it “not an agreement” but “Europe’s unconditional surrender to Trump’s sovereignism.” In his Enews publication, the leader of Italia Viva (IV) declared that “sovereignists harm the world.”
Renzi argued that while the US administration celebrates, such “colonial-style agreements” will ultimately erode America’s moral and economic strength over the medium term. He contrasted the deal sharply with the historic Marshall Plan, stating: “With the Marshall Plan, America led the world for decades. With tariffs, America harms its European allies first and foremost.”
“The sovereignist approach harms Italy, harms the economy, and harms freedom,” Renzi continued. “Over the medium term, it will even harm the Americans.” He expressed personal disillusionment, saying that for someone “raised on the myth of the democratic United States of Kennedy and Clinton,” the situation has reached a point where he finds himself nostalgic for the right-wing era of Ronald Reagan. Renzi noted that Reagan’s speeches against tariffs have “ironically come back into fashion in recent weeks.”
Renzi asserted that a “liberal and free-market right wing,” like Reagan’s, “could never have produced an economic and legal monstrosity like the one we see today.” He further claimed that the historic European right wing, represented by figures such as Germany’s Helmut Kohl, France’s Jacques Chirac, Spain’s José María Aznar, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, and “obviously” the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, “would never have accepted an agreement of this kind.”