I was supposed to be in Miami on June 22.
The Italy–US Business, Investment, Science and Innovation Forum. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani opened the day, with dozens of Italian companies flying in, a B2B floor built for exactly the kind of deals this relationship is supposed to produce. Months of organizing. An Embassy science track. A cultural exhibition flown in from Italy.
Canceled. Days out.
The Forum didn't fall apart because the business case was weak. The companies were ready. The investment thesis was sound. The science was real.
It fell apart because Italy drew a line.
After President Trump publicly mocked Prime Minister Meloni, Foreign Minister Tajani called the remarks "grave and offensive" and canceled his US visit. His visit was the reason the entire Forum was built around. "Neither I nor Italy ever beg," Meloni said. This was not a scheduling conflict. It was a sovereign country deciding that dignity is a precondition for partnership, and that it would forgo a marquee economic event rather than be treated as a supplicant.
Sit with what that means for business.
One of America's most reliable European allies, led by a prime minister who was the only major European leader at Trump's second inauguration, chose to pull the plug on a months-in-the-making commercial forum over how it was spoken to. When respect erodes at the top, the commerce underneath it doesn't get a vote. The manufacturer who booked the flight, the founder who cleared the calendar, the trade office that spent six months building the room — all of it moves the moment the political relationship does.
This is the world in which business now operates. On both sides of the Atlantic, politics move fast, and they move first. A relationship that looks settled on Monday can be a diplomatic rupture by Friday. Political volatility is not background noise. It is the operating environment.
Three things follow for leaders:
1. Build political risk into commercial planning, not as what-ifs, but as a live variable that can erase an event, a deal, or a quarter on short notice.
2. Hold your relationships independent of the institutions that convene them. The Forum is postponed. The people I connected with through it are not going anywhere. That is the difference between depending on an event and building a network.
3. Communicate through the disruption, not around it. When the ground moves, silence reads as confusion. The leaders who come out ahead are the ones whose stakeholders never have to wonder where they stand.
The world you planned for is not always the world you have.
I still intend to be in that room when it reconvenes. The relationship between these two economies is bigger than any single date on a calendar — and the way to honor it is to insist, as Italy just did, that partnership runs both ways.
Enjoy the ride + Plan accordingly.
-Marc
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Marc A. Ross helps leaders understand the world and how to talk about it. Two decades at the intersection of commerce and government. He is the Founder of Caracal Global and Brigadoon. He works with leaders who cannot afford to be reactive in an environment defined by permanent disruption. DET, WAS, EDI, LON. marc@caracal.global | marc@brigadoon.live | +1 202 596 5270
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