LONDON — Donald Trump understood the art of a state visit deal.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his sidekick King Charles got some bang for their buck as the U.S. president departed Britain with a potshot at Vladimir Putin, and a comradely press call at which Trump uncharacteristically pulled his punches.
Britain and the U.S. had done “more good on this planet than any two nations in human history,” Trump said, promising they “will always be friends.”
But behind the public bonhomie, there are still dangers ahead for Starmer, who has made great play of the dividends on offer to U.K. plc from having a good personal relationship with Trump.
Hopes the visit would provide a breakthrough on efforts by U.K. negotiators to axe the 25 percent tariffs facing Britain’s beleaguered steel and aluminum industry were dashed even before Trump landed.
And there were signs there could be trouble ahead as Starmer prepares to recognize a Palestine state this weekend.
“I have a disagreement with the prime minister on that score,” Trump told reporters, though he softened it with a pat on the back after the British PM strongly condemned Hamas. It is “one of our few disagreements, actually,” Trump noted.
Pomp and pounds
As footage of the grand state banquet, fly-pasts and military bands laid on in Trump’s honor was beamed around the world, the U.K. government’s PR machine went into overdrive. Announcements on tech, life sciences and energy investment came thick and fast over the course of the week.
The state visit yielded £250 billion in new deals “flowing both ways across the Atlantic,” Starmer boasted at the Thursday press conference. Trump branded their flagship tech pact as “one of a kind.”
The £30 billion in investment from U.S. tech firms announced this week, along with the Technology Prosperity Deal the two sides signed Thursday, had been in the works for months, but were all timed for the moment of the state visit.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s promise this week to deliver 120,000 of his company’s chips for new AI data centers, including data centers for ChatGPT-maker OpenAI that will form part of an “AI Growth Zone” in the northeast of England, had long been in the works and only narrowly missed being announced in June, according to two industry representatives.
But people familiar with the evolution of the wider tech deal say the state visit played a part in getting the deal over the line.
“It writes the next chapter of the ‘special relationship’ and certainly makes the state visit worth all the effort,” said one person involved in the negotiations.
Is that it?
In other sectors, Britain missed the mark.
Trade negotiators had hoped for a breakthrough, with the state visit representing a last-ditch effort to nix the White House’s 25 percent U.S. tariffs on the U.K.’s steel and aluminum exports imposed in March.
Instead, those duties were locked in for the foreseeable future.
Behind the scenes, the two sides agreed to maintain the status quo — a decision that doesn’t deliver on the White House’s promise to establish a tariff-free quota for the metals in the trade pact Trump and Starmer reached in May.
Britain’s embattled steel sector gave the arrangement “two cheers rather than three cheers,” a senior industry figure said. “I don’t think we’ve achieved anything.”
U.K. government negotiators had “been working incredibly hard, but I think their expectation and ours was that we would get a better deal than 25 percent tariffs,” the person added. “We were hoping to progress that further than we’ve got to today.”
Alasdair McDiarmid, assistant general secretary of steel union Community, said it was “incredibly disappointing that there has been no progress on removing tariffs for U.K. steel producers exporting to the US.”
“It is of huge concern to see that Starmer’s much-lauded zero-percent steel tariff deal with the U.S. doesn’t exist — despite No. 10 trumpeting it many months ago,” said Shadow Business and Trade Secretary Andrew Griffith.
A reduction in Trump’s 10 percent tariffs on Scotch whisky, and pending tariffs on pharmaceuticals, did not get a public mention in the cascade of events this week.
Diplomatic headwinds
Even Trump’s public condemnation of Russian President Putin — “He’s really let me down” — was not followed up with a tangible approach to halt the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Gavin Barwell, who was No. 10 chief of staff during the 2019 Trump state visit, also warned there was a risk that Starmer’s progress on Ukraine could “unravel” once Trump is back in the U.S.
“There is a bit of a pattern where he meets with the Europeans and they think they’ve got to x, and then it drifts back a bit when he goes back and talks to some of the people in the administration who are not so pro-Ukrainian,” Barwell said.
Domestic woes
Any satisfaction Starmer may feel about how the carefully controlled visit and press conference panned out may evaporate as he turns back to his domestic agenda.
Trump’s endorsement of Starmer, whom he thanked “for the great job I think you’re doing,” is unlikely to move the dial with either the public or his own disgruntled backbenchers.
One Labour backbencher grumbled ahead of the visit that Starmer needed to “show a bit of steel” and to “stop being so supplicant.”
YouGov polling shows that 70 percent of the British public dislike Trump.
The feeling isn’t universal, and another backbench MP, Luke Akehurst, said it was “remarkable that the PM has managed to build such a good working relationship with President Trump.”
“However uncomfortable we might feel as Labour supporters having to deal with someone who comes from a very different place in the political spectrum, the USA remains the essential defence partner for the U.K. and a critical source of trade and investment, so huge credit must go to Keir for sustaining the special relationship,” he added.
Others are reserving judgement until they have scoured the small print of the deals.
Another Trump card?
Starmer, for now, appears to think the rewards of his Trump strategy outweigh the risk.
“Both sides will be satisfied with how the state visit and press conference played out,” said Michael Martins, an economic adviser at the U.S. Embassy in London during Trump’s last state visit, who now has his own consultancy.
“The White House and No. 10 lined up business and investment announcements to help move past the turbulence of Mandelson’s resignation and Charlie Kirk’s killing last week,” he said, referencing the two big domestic stories engulfing each of the leaders.
The question for Downing Street is whether it has another Trump card up its sleeve amid the potentially choppy diplomatic waters ahead.
“He’s clearly got a thing with the royal family, and we may as well try to use that soft power effectively,” Barwell said.
But a third state visit might be too much even for Trump, who said he hoped he’d be the first and last person to be honored with a second state visit.
“I guess one of the things that they would probably be thinking about is whether either the king or the Prince of Wales does a visit to the U.S.,” Barwell suggested.
Graham Lanktree, Tom Bristow, Joe Bambridge, Dan Bloom and Emilio Casalicchio contributed to this report.
The post Starmer’s state visit honeymoon may be short-lived appeared first on Politico.
