‘$20bn in 20 minutes’: the man turning Donald Trump into a global deal machine
Paolo Zampolli provides access to the US president and his officials — at a price
Paolo Zampolli has a catchy pitch: “$20bn in 20 minutes”.
It’s a motto for the man who has said he introduced Melania and Donald Trump and jets between European and Middle Eastern capitals, sometimes alongside top US officials, sometimes next to catwalk models.
“My number-one boss is the president of America,” Zampolli told the FT. “I get my instructions from the White House, Commerce and the Department of War . . . anything to advance the America First agenda.”
Last week, in his official capacity as US special envoy, Zampolli was with vice-president JD Vance in Hungary, where he cut a deal to sell nuclear energy. A few months earlier, he was in Uzbekistan pushing Boeing planes.
“I’ve actually become Boeing’s number-two salesperson in the world, right after the president . . . unpaid, but it’s true,” he said, with a mix of pride and theatrical disbelief.
Boeing did not confirm this characterisation of his role. But the line is vintage Zampolli. It captures an archetype for an era of outrageous money-making.
Zampolli’s evolution from New York socialite and former modelling agent to globetrotting Trump envoy offers a window into how the US president exercises transactional power. Loyalists are deployed as intermediaries in a system where access, relationships and deals often blur into one.
Zampolli’s proximity to power has drawn scrutiny. The New York Times recently reported that he sought help from US immigration authorities in a dispute with his former partner, Amanda Ungaro, a Brazilian national who was ultimately deported. The report suggests Zampolli may have used his ties to the White House to target his former partner of nearly two decades, with whom he is in a custody dispute over their son.
He dismissed the episode as inaccurate and politically motivated, insisting he had not asked for any favours but merely sought clarity on the case.
But the recent noise has not hampered Zampolli’s ability to build a role and a business model around facilitating deals for Trump’s America.
In Zampolli’s telling, the Uzbekistan trip distilled his approach. Officials in the Central Asian country initially floated a $4bn Boeing order. He pushed back. “I said: ‘Are you crazy? I’m not calling my boss for a measly $6bn . . . I want $50bn.’”
Within hours, according to Zampolli, the two sides reached a deal at $20bn. “$20bn in 20 minutes,” he repeated, in a thick Italian accent. “I’ve worked on many more . . . small ones that I feel embarrassed to mention because they’re less than a billion.”
The reality is different. Trump announced in September that Uzbekistan Airways had agreed to buy 22 planes for more than $8bn, with an option to buy more. Later, Trump said Uzbekistan would invest “over $100 Billion Dollars” in American industry.
“The president alone closed the Boeing deal with Uzbekistan Airways for 22 Dreamliner aircraft during his September 5, 2025 call with President [Shavkat] Mirziyoyev,” a US state department official told the FT. “The president has assembled a robust team dedicated to implementing his vision to put America First and advance our national interests.”
Zampolli also touted a recent deal to open “Donald J Trump Park” in Romania’s capital of Bucharest to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.
Like the US president whose style he emulates, Zampolli is not big on the particulars and quick to downplay the mechanics of his deals. “I bring people together, global partnerships. Then there are the details . . . that’s when the secretaries step in.”
But the logic of his diplomacy is simpler and more revealing.
“Whenever people see me, they want something. They want access to the president,” he said. “I tell them: ‘Buy Boeing.’ If you want to make the president happy, buy Boeing. It’s the simplest thing in the world.”
Boeing declined to comment. The White House referred a request for comment to the state department.
Zampolli does not make a secret of his role. Much of his work as an envoy is documented on his Instagram feed, a running highlight reel of meetings and handshakes and deals.
Long before he was cutting deals on behalf of Washington, Zampolli was a fixture of New York’s late 1990s nightlife and modelling scene — a swaggering impresario whose confidence often outpaced his English.
An October 2001 profile in Vanity Fair captured him in full, both mocking and marvelling at his improbable influence over the city’s social and fashion circuits.
“Zampolli’s presence on ‘Page Six’, the gossip column in The New York Post — where he is always identified as a ‘model mogul’ — is surpassed only by ‘hot-blooded hotel heiress’ Paris Hilton’s,” wrote Vanity Fair in a roughly 3,000-word profile titled Ze-e E-e-en credible Paolo!, an irreverent, if not entirely politically correct, portrait.
Around that time, Zampolli — scion of an Italian family with roots in steel and railways who claims to have distant ties to the Agnelli business dynasty and even a pope — struck the deal that would define his life. He has said that in 1998 he introduced a young Slovenian model, Melania Knauss, to Trump at a fashion week party.
Zampolli’s role in the first couple’s origin story spilled into public view in recent days, after Melania Trump held a surprise press conference in which she denied any ties to Jeffrey Epstein and said the late child sex offender played no role in her introduction to her husband.
Shortly after, Ungaro, Zampolli’s former partner, alluded on X that Melania Trump had a connection to Epstein before later deleting the posts.
Zampolli, characteristically, brushed it aside. “And what does Jeffrey Epstein say [about me]? ‘He’s trouble stay away.’ And sure enough, he hated me. It’s not like the Epstein files revealed, ‘If you want hookers, call Paolo,’ or ‘Paolo is on the island.’ No he never invited me to the island.”
In a Trump administration that prizes loyalty and results over process, Zampolli embodies a kind of parallel diplomacy: informal, personality-driven and all about the deals.
The effect is the collapse of distinctions that have long underpinned US foreign policy: between statecraft and salesmanship, public office and private network, diplomacy and dealmaking.
For Zampolli, there is no contradiction. The pitch remains the same, whether delivered in a Budapest ministry or a Central Asian capital: big numbers, quick timelines and a clear message about how to get what you want.
“Buy American,” he says.
If that doesn’t work: “$20bn in 20 minutes.”