Washington DC - US President Donald Trump said he would "100 percent" reach a tariffs deal with the European Union as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni led a charm offensive at the White House on Thursday.

Trump complimented the "fantastic" far-right leader, the first from Europe to visit the Republican since he slapped 20% tariffs on EU exports that he has since suspended for 90 days.

Casting herself as the only European who can de-escalate Trump's trade war with Europe, Meloni highlighted her conservative common ground with Trump.

"The goal for me is to make the West great again, and I think we can do it together," she told reporters in the Oval Office, highlighting shared views on immigration and "woke ideology."

Donald Trump Trump orders DOJ to go after New York AG Letitia James for alleged fraud

Meloni said Trump had accepted an invitation to visit Rome in the "near future" and that he might also meet European leaders there.

The two leaders talked up the chances of a deal, one of a series that Trump says he will extract from major trading partners over his world-shaking tariffs.

"There will be a trade deal, 100 percent," Trump said during an earlier working lunch with Meloni, who said she was "sure" they could reach an agreement.

But in a sign of the potential challenges ahead, Trump said that he was in "no rush" and that Meloni had not changed his mind on his overall tariff policy.

"Everybody wants to make a deal – and if they don't want to make a deal, we'll make the deal for them," Trump added.

Meloni was the only European leader to be invited to Trump's January 20 inauguration, and US officials said she was "eye-to-eye with the president on a lot of issues like immigration and Ukraine."

Trump said that Europe needed to "get a lot smarter" on immigration, returning to his administration's repeated rhetoric on the subject.

Following Thursday's meeting with Trump, Meloni will fly back to Rome on Friday in time to host US Vice President JD Vance, with whom she has a meeting planned.

Trump's threatened tariffs could have a major impact on Italy, the world's fourth-largest exporter, which sends around 10% of its exports to the US.