Ports and beyond: the business with Florida behind the Meloni-DeSantis meeting
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is visiting Italy together with a delegation of industrialists: he met Meloni and met with representatives of the Italian ports. Here's what they discussed
Yesterday Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met at Palazzo Chigi with the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who came to Italy at the head of an economic-commercial mission: Florida, in fact, is the American state – it is located at the south-eastern end of the country – with the largest number of active Italian companies.
Ron DeSantis ran in the Republican Party primaries and was considered Donald Trump's main challenger, only to then withdraw and support the ex-president (now president-elect, having won the elections of November 5).
From the note released by Palazzo Chigi we learn that Meloni and DeSantis have expressed "the desire to further increase investments and collaborations between the two sides of the Atlantic, also in new strategic sectors".
TRADE BETWEEN ITALY AND FLORIDA
Between 2021 and 2023, we read on the SelectFlorida website, an association dedicated to attracting foreign companies to the state, Florida imported mainly yachts and boats, cars and vehicles, petroleum products and wine from Italy; in the same period, it exported mainly gold. In 2023, trade was worth $4.3 billion.
DESANTIS' TRIP TO ITALY
The delegation led by DeSantis (and coordinated by SelectFlorida) will be in Italy until November 15 and will visit, in addition to Rome, Viareggio, Florence, Turin and Milan. The governor is accompanied by eighty-five representatives from companies in transportation and logistics, aerospace and defense, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing and education.
The trade mission – according to the Florida government statement – "aims to create numerous opportunities for economic growth for the state, given that Italy is among Florida's top twenty commercial partners at an international level": to be precise, it occupies the fourteenth place in the ranking.
The statement also states that both Florida and Italy have "strong companies" in the aerospace, naval, defense, life sciences and healthcare sectors.
THE PORTS
The day before the meeting between Meloni and DeSantis, representatives of Florida ports met in Rome with the presidents of various Italian port system authorities.
The meeting, coordinated by Assoporti and SelectFlorida, was attended by the authorities of the central-northern Tyrrhenian Sea, the northern Adriatic Sea, the Strait and the northern Tyrrhenian Sea. On the US side, the Florida Secretary of Transportation and representatives of the ports of Miami, Manatee, Canaveral and Everglades were present.
“In view of the next edition of the Seatrade Cruise Global in Miami, a working group has been established between the Italian ports and the ports of Florida,” Pino Musolino, president of the port system authority of the central-northern Tyrrhenian Sea, told Startmag , which includes the ports of Civitavecchia, Fiumicino and Gaeta.
The initiative will serve to "define operational capabilities, identify the particular needs of the ports, establish good practices and establish commercial relations with a view to national interest, both on our side and on the American side", added Musolino: "Yes it was an operational meeting, not an exclusively formal one."
Therefore, greater coordination on the management of cruise companies should develop between Italian and Florida ports. Civitavecchia is the first Italian cruise port; The Port of Miami is the largest cruise port in the world.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/meloni-desantis-commercio-florida-italia/ on Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:20:17 +0000.