The image was unfortunate: Prime Minister Keir Starmer, crouching down to scoop up papers spilled by President Trump as he showed off a finalized trade agreement between the United States and Britain. Yet the inevitable comparisons of the British leader to an eager courtier belied a surprisingly successful outcome for Mr. Starmer at the Group of 7 meeting in Alberta, Canada.
In addition to the trade deal, Mr. Starmer won Mr. Trump’s assurance that the United States would not mothball a strategically important submarine alliance with Britain and Australia. Worries about the future of the alliance, known as AUKUS, had flared in London last week after the Pentagon began a review of it.
At a leaders’ gathering where Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada cut short a photo opportunity with Mr. Trump and the president said on social media that a “publicity seeking” President Emmanuel Macron of France “always gets it wrong,” Mr. Starmer emerged, improbably, as Mr. Trump’s best friend.
As often with Mr. Trump, friendship can feel rather casual. After telling reporters that he and Mr. Starmer had signed an executive order implementing the British-American deal, which was first announced in May, Mr. Trump said, “So we have our trade agreement with the European Union.”
Mr. Starmer blinked and kept his silence.
The executive order left several details unresolved: While it lowered American tariffs on British cars to 10 percent from 25 percent — a critical goal for Mr. Starmer — Mr. Trump stopped short of guaranteeing zero tariffs for British steel exports. And digital services remain outside the scope of the agreement, as do specific tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
Still, Mr. Starmer was able to brandish the deal as a win for Britain’s beleaguered automobile industry. And he got it done before Mr. Trump left the summit early to deal with the spiraling conflict between Israel and Iran. The president skipped a meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, which exposed Mr. Albanese to criticism from opponents back home.
Mr. Trump played up the unlikely rapport he has developed with Mr. Starmer — something the prime minister has cultivated methodically since before Mr. Trump won the election last November. “We’ve become friends in a short period of time,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “He’s slightly more liberal than I am.”
The president also suggested that Britain would not face future tariffs because, he said, “I like them — that’s their ultimate protection.”
As insurance policies go, that may seem rather fickle, but British officials will take it. They negotiated furiously to be the first country in the world to announce a trade agreement with Mr. Trump after he imposed across-the-board tariffs on April 1. And Britain remains the only one with a deal, even if its scope is narrow and there are no assurances that Mr. Trump will not reverse course.
“Everything could always change, but at this point Starmer is handling Trump better than anyone expected, or any recent P.M. would or did manage,” David Henig, the director of U.K. Trade Policy at the European Center for International Political Economy, wrote on Tuesday in a post on social media.
Mr. Trump’s commitment to stick by the AUKUS alliance was no less of a win for Mr. Starmer, who recently announced plans for Britain to build up to 12 attack submarines as part of an ambitious rearmament program. The Pentagon review of AUKUS is being led by Elbridge A. Colby, the under secretary of defense policy, who has in the past expressed skepticism about the alliance.
While there are still doubts about whether the United States will have the capacity to supply submarines to Australia — as stipulated in the alliance — Mr. Trump’s vote of confidence will reassure British military officials who feared that the review would lay the groundwork for killing it.
“This will be a relief for both the U.K. and Australia,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London. “The AUKUS alliance is a central part of the U.K.’s forward defense program, and access to U.S. technology will be vital to its success.”
Mr. Trump’s premature departure meant that Mr. Starmer was not able to lobby him further on issues like sanctions against Russia for its war on Ukraine. But he might have made little headway, given Mr. Trump’s expression of regret on Monday that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was no longer a member of the leaders’ group.
Whatever the wisecracks in Britain about the prime minister scrambling around at Mr. Trump’s feet to pick up his papers, Mr. Starmer can console himself that he is not Dusko Markovic, the former prime minister of Montenegro. In 2017, at a NATO summit, Mr. Trump appeared to shove Mr. Markovic out of his way to get in front of him for a photo opportunity.
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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