AYLESBURY, England (AP) — After the pomp, it’s time for the politics.
President Donald Trump met Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, the final day of the U.S. leader's state visit to Britain, with tech investment, steel tariffs and potentially tricky talks over Ukraine and Gaza on the agenda.
The president and first lady Melania Trump were feted by King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Wednesday at Windsor Castle with all the pageantry the monarchy can muster: gold-trimmed carriages, scarlet-clad soldiers, artillery salutes and a glittering banquet in a grand ceremonial hall.
British officials have festooned the trip with the kind of superlatives Trump revels in: It's an “unprecedented” second state visit for the U.S. leader, featuring the biggest military honor guard ever assembled for such an occasion.
On Thursday it was Starmer’s turn to welcome the president to Chequers, a 16th-century manor house northwest of London that serves as a rural retreat for British leaders.
After bidding goodbye to the king and queen at Windsor — Trump called the monarch “a great gentleman, and a great king" — Trump flew by helicopter some 20 miles (32 kilometers) to Chequers. He was welcomed by the prime minister and his wife, Victoria Starmer, before the two men sat down for a formal meeting.
Trump’s British hosts want to celebrate the strength of the U.S-U.K. relationship, almost 250 years after its rocky start in 1776. Trump was welcomed by ceremonial honor guard complete with bagpipers — a nod to the president’s Scottish heritage — and shown items from the archive of wartime leader Winston Churchill, who coined the term “special relationship” for the bond between the United States and Britain.
Trump told a business reception at Chequers that the two countries shared an “unbreakable bond.” Starmer said that relatioinship "is the very foundation of our security, our freedom and our prosperity.”
Trans-Atlantic tech partnership
To coincide with the visit, Britain said U.S. companies had pledged 150 billion pounds ($204 billion) in investment in the United Kingdom, including 90 billion pounds ($122 billion) from investment firm Blackstone in the next decade. Investment will also flow the other way, including almost $30 billion by pharmaceutical firm GSK in the U.S.
At a reception attended by tech bosses including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Trump administration officials such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Starmer said it was “the biggest investment package of its kind in British history by a country mile.”
The two leaders also signed a “tech prosperity deal” that U.K. officials say will bring thousands of jobs and billions in investment in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy.
It includes a U.K. arm of Stargate, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI, and a host of AI data centers around the U.K. American firms are announcing 31 billion pounds ($42 billion) investment in the U.K.’s AI sector, including $30 billion from Microsoft for protects including Britain’s largest supercomputer.
British officials say they have not agreed to scrap a digital services tax or water down internet regulation to get the deal, some details of which have yet to be announced.
The British government is learning that when it comes to deals with the U.S. administration, the devil is in the detail. In May, Starmer and Trump struck a trade agreement that reduced U.S. tariffs on Britain’s key auto and aerospace industries.
But talks on slashing duties on steel and aluminum to zero from their current level of 25% have stalled, despite a promise in May that the issue would be settled within weeks.
The British Chambers of Commerce said failure to cut the tariffs would be “greeted with dismay” by the British steel industry.
Difficult discussions on Ukraine, Middle East
There are also potentially difficult conversations to be had over Ukraine and the Middle East.
The British government has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinian civilians, calling Israel's latest Gaza City offensive “utterly reckless and appalling.” Starmer has said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state this month, potentially within days. Trump has threatened to penalize Canada during trade negotiations for making a similar move.
Starmer also has played a major part in European efforts to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine. Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin but has not made good on threats to impose new sanctions on Russia for shunning peace negotiations. On Tuesday, Trump appeared to put the onus on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying, “He's going to have to make a deal.”
The king gave Trump a gentle nudge in his state banquet speech on the strength of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Charles noted that “as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.”
Potentially awkward Epstein questions
Starmer will also be bracing for awkward questions about Jeffrey Epstein. Days before the state visit, Starmer fired Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson, over the envoy’s past friendship with the convicted sex offender, who authorities say killed himself in 2019.
Fourteen months after winning a landslide election victory, Starmer’s government is struggling to kickstart Britain’s sluggish economy and his Labour Party is lagging in the polls. Starmer wants a successful state visit to balance weeks of bad news.
Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said the trip is likely to be “a difficult visit for the prime minister, much more so than for the U.S. president.”
For Trump, “this plays well at home, it plays well abroad. It’s almost entirely to President Trump’s advantage to turn up to Britain and be celebrated by the British establishment,” she said.
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AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this story.