LONDON — The Royal Family and 10 Downing St. pulled out all the stops for President Donald Trump‘s lavish state visit this week, even in the face of significant opposition from England’s left-of-center politicos.
The aim was incredibly straightforward — stay on Trump’s good side to help negotiate favorable trade terms for the United Kingdom and keep the president moving toward the European position regarding the war in Ukraine.
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And the early reviews certainly indicate that the U.K. met those goals.
James Johnson, a former Downing Street pollster who worked under Theresa May, the first British prime minister operating under Trump’s first term in office, told the Washington Examiner that “the wins seem already clear from a UK perspective.”
“Look, the fundamental thing that matters is that the most important partner in the world for the UK is the US,” Johnson, who now runs JL Partners, explained. “In defense, security, trade, influence, whatever. From almost any UK lawmaker’s perspective, that’s worth a fancy state dinner and then some.”
Fred de Fossard, the Prosperity Institute’s director of strategy for parliamentary and legislative work, believes that Trump’s trip “seems to have been a success for Britain and Anglo-American relations generally.”
“The huge tech and energy investments announced at the visit in the UK are a sign of the strength of Britain’s tech economy, and American tech companies’ confidence in Britain as a place to do business,” he continued. “Hopefully, this is followed with progress on a more comprehensive trade agreement which brings down tariffs and non-tariff barriers.”
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A spokesperson for the British embassy in Washington told the Washington Examiner that “this is what strong future-facing diplomacy between the closest of allies looks like,” noting that, “over two days, Britain honoured the president, the first family, and the American people in the best traditions of our nation.”
“Simultaneously, we signed new partnerships in frontier technologies, energy and defense – underpinned by huge commercial investments,” the spokesperson added. “These deals will help rewire the special relationship for the decades ahead, and deliver jobs and economic growth for Americans and Brits alike.”
The Trump administration has reveled in how the president’s tariff agenda is driving new, foreign investments into domestic manufacturing, but this week’s trip saw the White House driving new American investments into critical British industries.
On Thursday, during Trump’s bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, the two governments formally announced two separate US-UK investment agreements. The first was an investment partnership on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and semiconductor production, while the second launched a collaborative framework to expand nuclear energy in Britain, which, among other projects, will see American energy company X-Energy work with British partners to construct 12 modular nuclear reactors across northern England, which conservative estimates believe will create 2,500 new jobs and hit output levels to power some 1.5 million homes.
In total, the two initiatives are expected to see more than $150 billion in American capital invested on the other side of the Atlantic.
On Ukraine, Trump did not formally commit the United States to the defense backstop for Kyiv that Europeans have been pressing for, but the president did voice increasing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing, and escalating, attacks against Ukraine.
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“He’s really let me down,” Trump said of Putin during his Thursday press conference with Starmer at Chequers.
“The Russia situation, I hope we’re going to have some good news for you coming up,” he continued. “It doesn’t so much affect you. Of course, you are a lot closer to the scene than we are. We have a whole ocean separating us, but I will say this. It’s millions of people who have died in that war, millions of souls, and they’re not American. They’re soldiers, mostly soldiers, as you know. The soldiers are being killed at levels nobody’s seen since the Second World War, but they’re being killed, and I feel I have an obligation to get it settled for that reason.”
Before heading to the United Kingdom, Trump announced that he was ready to escalate penalties on Russia’s energy sector and their chief transshipping partner, China, as long as European nations joined the U.S. in declaring new sanctions and tariffs. White House officials told the Washington Examiner that Thursday’s nuclear announcement was a “critical” step toward reducing the U.K.’s reliance on Russian oil and could provide a model for other European nations to do the same.
Still, Starmer himself isn’t totally out of hot water. As of late August, the prime minister enjoyed a 44-point negative approval rating, and hundreds, if not thousands, of leftists turned up to protest Trump’s visit to Windsor Castle on Wednesday. The night prior, as Trump was landing at London’s Stansted Airport, two separate groups of activists put up displays at Windsor highlighting the president’s past connections to disgraced financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
De Fossard told the Washington Examiner that it “remains to be seen” if the positives earned from Trump’s trip will help Starmer “politically.”
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“Foreign policy interventions and summits rarely win votes in Britain and the government faces huge domestic problems on immigration, inflation and public sector debt,” he stated.