WASHINGTON. “We are the most reliable partner of the United States for investments in strategic sectors”. The Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, claims the centrality of Rome in the complex economic and political web on which the West sets the confrontation with China and Russia in the coming years.
From Washington, where he is on a three-day mission characterized by an agenda that led him, among others, to bilateral talks with the Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, to meetings with the representative of the National Security Council for the space , Chirag Parikh, and to present to investors the one billion euro sovereign fund which is taking shape, Urso underlined the Italian technological excellence and the vitality of our economy.
Urso – who will be in Emilia-Romagna on Monday for phase two of the reconstruction – explained how there is total alignment with the United States on the shortening and independence of the supply chain, especially linked to critical materials. “We cannot pass from dependence on Russian fossils to that of critical Chinese materials”, the reasoning of the minister who found total agreement with Gina Raimondo on this issue. The two addressed the question of the technological supply chain, discussed the so-called “Road for the reconstruction of Ukraine” but did not touch on the thorny issue of the Chinese Silk Road. “We haven’t talked about it”, he cut short, adding that “Italy will decide autonomously, it being understood that China is and will always be a major trading partner”.
Urso explained to the American interlocutors the value of the Microelectronics Plan which will implement the European Chips Act. “We are presenting it to the world and a semiconductor task force has been to several countries to describe the potential of the project.” The ministry’s envoys went to Japan, South Korea, the USA and Japan, the four cardinal points capable of developing the digital industry. And Italy turns to these nations to «be the ideal partner». On semiconductors and the development of Intel-branded factories and research centers in Europe, the minister was evasive, limiting himself to speaking of “continuous dialogue with Intel” but “not only with them”, referring precisely to the mission of the ministry’s task force.
The Italian Sovereign Fund is also part of this strategy. Yesterday the minister met private and public investors to explain the details of this instrument which will target investments in raw materials, strategic in the new geopolitical context. “The current billion will soon be enriched with new public and private financial resources to increase” the Fund’s financing capacity. The activism of Italian industrial policy is based on the trust that the international community seems to place in our country. The minister was very explicit about this, recalling how “the interest of the United States in Italy has increased since last year’s gloomy forecasts which predicted a country in recession after two quarters with negative growth turned out to be false”. Italy, on the contrary, claimed Urso, has achieved better growth rates than all its European competitors and has forecasts – from Istat to the OECD – of an increase for 2023. In this context, foreign investments have found new life . Urso cited the example of the 200 million euros that an American company has invested in Lazio for a pharmaceutical company. Italian exports to the United States have increased, and tourism is driving the growth numbers. From this point of view, the inauguration yesterday at Dulles Airport of the first Ita Airways flight on the Rome-Washington route is a tangible sign of the connections between the two countries. —
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