On Friday, Italy and the United States released a joint statement opposing what they called "discriminatory" digital service taxes, suggesting that Rome might be stepping back from a tax policy that has frustrated Washington. The statement followed a series of meetings between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and both Donald Trump and his deputy JD Vance. Meloni received a warm reception from Trump, which starkly contrasted the cooler approach he’s shown other European leaders.

U.S. administrations, including Trump's, have been irritated by European digital taxes aimed at major American tech companies like Google (Alphabet), Facebook (Meta), Apple, and Amazon for years. Italy imposes a 3% tax on revenue from online transactions for digital companies that earn at least 750 million euros ($853.35 million) globally. However, this tax brings in less than 500 million euros in revenue for the country each year.

After Meloni’s visit to the White House on Thursday, Rome and Washington released a statement saying, “We agreed that a non-discriminatory environment in terms of digital services taxation is necessary to enable investments from cutting-edge tech companies.”

The statement, which also mentioned that Trump would soon make an official visit to Italy, did not make it clear whether Rome had agreed to drop the tax. Although the web tax brings in only a small amount of revenue compared to Italy’s total budget of over 800 billion euros, it remains a sensitive issue for Prime Minister Meloni.

According to political sources, while she faces pressure from the U.S. to back down, members of her ruling coalition are pushing her to stand firm and demand more from big tech companies to help fund expensive policies without putting additional strain on Italy’s fragile public finances.

On Thursday, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti stated that discussions with the U.S. regarding taxation on big tech should happen directly between the two countries, rather than through the European Union. He also mentioned meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a G20 summit next week. The joint statement highlighted support for American investments in AI computing and cloud services in Italy, positioning the country as a key data hub for the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Last year, Amazon’s cloud division, AWS, announced plans to invest 1.2 billion euros in Italy over the next five years to expand its data centre operations there.