No to trade wars that are not good for anyone, not for Europe, much less the United States. And as for the rearmament plan, the assurance that in the meantime the cohesion funds, or other spending items, will not be touched. And in any case, Italy will evaluate. These are the two key passages of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's communications to the Senate ahead of the important European Council on March 20 and 21. "I am convinced that we must continue to work, with concreteness and pragmatism, to find possible common ground and avert a 'Trade War' that would benefit no one, neither the United States nor Europe. And I believe it is unwise to fall into the temptation of retaliation that becomes a vicious circle in which everyone loses. While it is true that duties imposed on non-EU goods can theoretically favor domestic production, in a highly interconnected context such as that of the European and U.S. economies, the picture becomes more complicated," Meloni said yesterday, warning that "duties can easily translate into induced inflation, with the consequent reduction in household purchasing power and the subsequent raising of rates by the ECB to counter the inflationary phenomenon, as we have already seen. Result: inflation and monetary tightening that dampens economic growth. I am not sure, in short, that it is necessarily good business to respond to tariffs with more tariffs. That's why I think Italy's energies should be spent looking for common-sense solutions between the United States and Europe, dictated more by logic than instinct, with a view to mutual respect and economic convenience". And on the EU Rearm that Ursula von der Leyen would like, the Prime Minister explained, "When we proposed renaming the plan using the words 'Defend Europe,' we did not pose a simple semantic or nominalistic question, but we proposed a question of substance". Moreover, Meloni specified, "Chairwoman Von der Leyen gave 800 billion euros as its overall size. I think it is very useful to point out that these 800 billion euros are neither resources that are taken out of other spending chapters nor additional European resources. Meanwhile, we have achieved that cohesion funds are touched. It is not a question of spending 800 billion euro of resources that currently exist in the budgets of the member states, perhaps cutting services to citizens in order to find resources or stopping investing on the other chapters. Instead, it is about the possibility of using additional deficits, compared to what is normally provided for in the Stability Pact. This is the framework that has been proposed to us, and within this framework Italy will consider very carefully whether or not it is appropriate to activate the tools provided by the Plan”.