Secretary Rubio and Italian Deputy PM and FM Antonio Tajani at a Critical Minerals MOU Signing Ceremony

SECRETARY RUBIO: It's great to be here with Minister Tajani. He's the deputy prime minister and become a good friend, and our two countries work very closely together. And we're very happy and pleased to be signing this Memorandum of Understanding on a critical topic that we all know is being considered constantly on the issue of critical minerals, and Italy has been a great partner and one we continue to want to work with, so grazie.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER TAJANI: Thank you very much, Marco. For Italy it is very important to sign this Memorandum of Understanding. As you know, Italy is an industrial country, the second most important industrial country in Europe, and on trade we are number four in the world. The prices of our raw materials is very, very important for us. This - this agreement with America is a key point for our strategy, for our industrial policy.

(The Memorandum is signed.)

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER TAJANI: (Via interpreter)Thank you. For us it's very important to sign this agreement because Italy is an industrial country. For us the raw materials are very important. We are collaborating with the United States. Now we have participated a great event organized by Rubio in Washington, and this is the follow-up of that conference. And we want to compete at the international level. It's important to have a reduced price of these raw materials, and so this is very important. Today with the United States we are going a leap forward, a very important one. Thank you.

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