Trade, Ukraine, Gaza: Starmer pleading for concessions from Trump

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump and his host, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, will get down to political business on the second day of his state visit.

It’s Trump’s second state visit to the United Kingdom, the first time in UK history a foreign leader has been accorded this honour twice.

The visit is a carefully choreographed affair by 10 Downing Street that seeks to showcase the depth of the “special relationship” between London and Washington.

The hosts have done all they can to please Trump with royal pageantry while keeping the deeply unpopular US president away from a hostile British public in Central London.

Consequently, the meeting takes place at Chequers, the official country residence of British prime ministers, 50 kilometres northwest of London.

“For Trump, personal relations with international leaders are more important than contacts with institutions,” Ian Lesser, the head of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a transatlantic think tank, told Euronews.

“There is a different dynamic at play between Trump and Starmer, whereas Trump has a particularly critical attitude towards the EU and its leaders”, he added.

For Starmer, there is much more at stake during the talks with Trump than for the US president.

Starmer hopes for new investment deals

The prime minister is hoping the visit will be dominated by news of new investment deals between the two countries following the much heralded bilateral trade deal last May.

As part of Trump's visit, Microsoft announced a new $30bn (€25bn) investment in the UK's AI sector - its largest outside the US. The package forms a major part of a €35bn agreement, dubbed the "Tech Prosperity Deal", between the British government and several US tech giants, including Google and Nvidia.

Being on the good side of Trump’s trade agenda is imperative for the struggling British economy, according to Laurel Rapp, director of the US and North America Programme at Chatham House.

“But much work remains to shape the initial set of trade terms into a detailed, operative economic prosperity deal,” she wrote in a research paper.

London and Washington now have the heady task of hammering out implementation details on market access, digital trade, nontariff barriers, and economic security. 

Under the deal, the US planned to reduce tariffs on aluminium and steel from 25% to zero, but that has not happened yet.

“When it comes to steel, we will make sure that we have an announcement as soon as possible,” British business secretary Peter Kyle said in an interview on Sunday. Other ministers have expressed optimism that a deal on base metals can be secured during Trump’s visit.

The two countries are also expected to sign a multibillion-dollar deal to develop small nuclear projects, which could, in some cases, help to power new artificial intelligence data centres.

Trump’s visit could help sustain further negotiating momentum. During his trip to Scotland in July, Trump promised he was “going to look at” dropping 10% reciprocal tariffs, a casual remark that raised some hope within a nervous British government.

“I’m into helping them. Our country is doing very well … They’d like to see if they could get a little bit better deal, so we’ll talk to them”, Trump told reporters in Washington before his departure.

But whether Trump will follow up on his promise is anybody’s guess.

The same goes for Ukraine diplomacy. Over the weekend, Starmer and European leaders were delighted when Trump called Russia “the aggressor” for the first time.

He also pledged “major sanctions” on Russia, but he said that would only come after NATO member states would announce sanctions first and halt all purchases of Russian oil.

“That offers further evidence Washington remains reluctant to lead on new punitive measures against Moscow,” according to Laurel Rapp.

Making the case for tougher sanctions against Russia

Yet, this could be Starmer’s moment.

The British prime minister may be the only European leader right now “who may have an opening with Trump to make the case for tougher sanctions”, Ian Lesser said.

At a moment when Trump’s stance on Moscow seems to be hardening, Starmer could make the case that Vladimir Putin is not serious about striking a peace agreement.

And he could convince the US president that the recent Russian incursion of drones into Polish and Romanian airspace was not an accident.

Other observers want Starmer to go even further.

Any discussion at Chequers on security guarantees “must not be limited to military commitments”, human rights lawyer Wayne Jordash KC told Euronews in a written statement.

“They must also critically build resilience into Ukraine's institutions and legal system to ensure that Russia is never again able to invade and commit atrocities against Ukrainians, and the country is left with the tools it needs to defend itself and prevent recurrence of the crimes including Russia’s violations of the UN Charter”, added Jordash, president of international human rights foundation Global Rights Compliance.

Again, whether Trump can be swayed by Starmer on Ukraine, remains to be seen.

On Gaza, Starmer’s task of persuasion with Trump would seem to require heavier lifting.

But Starmer might have some leverage simply because of the protracted stalemate on the ground: Israel’s latest military offensive in Gaza City hasn’t yielded any tangible results, and the humanitarian catastrophe in the territory continues unabatedly.

“Trump is not happy with the current situation and with Israel’s latest moves,” Ian Lesser said.

That could make Washington more receptive to exercising pressure on Israel. After all, Trump said Israel’s Doha airstrike “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.”

On the other hand, London’s threat to recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly later this month would likely deeply anger Trump.

He recently said that recognition would amount to “rewarding Hamas”, condemning the Saudi and French-led push for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations last week.

Though recognition of Palestine would likely not accompany tangible changes on the ground, it would send a powerful signal to Israel, Washington, and the world that the UK believes the status quo cannot hold. 

How about the Epstein files?

If Ukraine and Gaza remain thorny issues for Starmer and Trump, it is not clear whether they would help distract from more prickly troubles: the questions about Jeffrey Epstein.

The subject of the late convicted child offender will almost certainly arise during a press conference scheduled for this Thursday.

When Trump visited his golf course in Scotland in July, he was already hit by questions about his relationship with the disgraced financier.

Trump then blamed his fallout with Epstein on the paedophile sex trafficker recruiting young women who worked at Trump’s Florida resort spa.

Starmer is also in an unenviable spot. Last week, the prime minister sacked his ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, for his links to Epstein.

Those links were known to Downing Street before Lord Mandelson was offered the influential top job, but Starmer’s office said information about it only came to light last week, leading to Mandelson's firing.

It’s easy to see how the Epstein files could embarrass Starmer and Trump on the last day of the state visit – and haunt their meeting altogether.