A high-ranking Italian official has canceled his plans to attend a Miami conference promoting business between Italy and the United States, citing \u201cserious and offensive\u201d statements from President Donald Trump about the country\u2019s prime minister.<\/p>\n
Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani was scheduled to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday at the Italy US Business, Investment, Science and Innovation Forum in Coral Gables, with plans to discuss economic security and critical minerals. Scheduled at The Biltmore Hotel, the event has been billed as a \u201cstrategic opportunity for Italian and American companies to establish and strengthen business relationships across key sectors\u201d in both countries.<\/p>\n
The State Department announced the meeting between the two diplomats on Thursday.<\/p>\n
But those plans were upended just hours later over an interaction between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during the G7 summit in France, and a subsequent interview the president gave to an Italian news outlet.<\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s La7 reported Friday that Trump said Meloni had \u201cbegged\u201d him for a photo during the summit, and that he only agreed because he felt \u201cpity\u201d for her.<\/p>\n
The news station did not publish the original audio of the call, which was translated into Italian for viewers, including a voice-over for the president.<\/p>\n
Meloni shot back at Trump shortly after the interview was broadcast, saying in a video posted to X, \u201cNeither I nor Italy ever beg.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has not commented on the dust up.<\/p>\n
Tajani was set to arrive in Miami on June 21 for the event. But, in a Friday morning post to X, he said he was canceling the trip to the United States.<\/p>\n
The Italian Trade Agency and the 300-member Italy-America Chamber of Commerce Southeast organized the Biltmore event to bring together government and businesses both in Italy and the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A high-ranking Italian official has canceled his plans to attend a Miami conference promoting business between Italy and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[130808,48963,2655,113,28,2625,9879,130807,123,125,124,373,3445,6993,232,4571],"class_list":["post-314349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-academic-levels","tag-americas","tag-caribbean","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-high-school","tag-illinois","tag-life-and-society","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-dade-county","tag-north-america","tag-south-america","tag-tallahassee","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}