Italy Sends Its Deputy Foreign Minister to Chile, and Comes Back Pointing at an €11 Billion Number

Italy's deputy foreign minister Maria Tripodi led a business mission to Santiago this month built around a specific goal, turning a political relationship between Rome and Santiago that already runs deep into something closer to an industrial one. The trip combined commercial diplomacy, meetings between Italian and Chilean companies arranged around trade and investment, with government to government talks on energy and security that went well beyond the usual trade mission agenda.

The numbers Tripodi brought with her make the case for why Chile is getting this level of attention. Bilateral trade between the two countries topped 2.1 billion euros, up 7.7 percent in the first half of 2026, and Italian investment already in the Chilean economy stands at roughly 11 billion euros. Chile is now Italy's third largest export market in Latin America, a position that puts it ahead of most of the region despite a much smaller population than regional heavyweights like Brazil or Mexico.

The sectors Tripodi singled out for new partnerships read like a list built around Chile's own strengths, energy transition and renewables, mining, infrastructure, healthcare, agricultural machinery and agribusiness, and advanced technology. The ambition, she said, is to develop industrial and technological partnerships, creating value in both countries, a framing that positions the mission as something beyond a simple sales trip for Italian exporters. Export credit and investment agencies SIMEST, SACE and CDP backed the push by helping organize the first Chile Italy Business Forum, giving companies from both sides a structured venue to find partners rather than leaving the matchmaking to chance.

Tripodi's meetings extended past the business delegation. She sat down with Chile's energy minister Ximena Rincón and trade undersecretary Paula Weinstein to discuss the energy and infrastructure side of the relationship directly, and met separately with General Marcelo Araya Zapata, commander of the Carabineros, Chile's national police, to talk about cooperation against organized crime and narcotics trafficking, an addition to the itinerary that signals Rome is treating the relationship as more than a commercial one.

The Chile mission fits inside a larger Italian push into Latin America, one that also includes Rome's support for finishing the long delayed EU Mercosur trade agreement. Mining and energy partnerships in a country that sits on some of the world's largest lithium and copper reserves are an obvious draw on their own, but the breadth of this trip, from business forums to police cooperation, suggests Italy is betting that a deeper relationship with Chile pays off well beyond any single contract signed in Santiago.