After the royal pomp, Trump's state visit turns to politics and a
meeting with Starmer
[September 18, 2025]
By MICHELLE L. PRICE and JILL LAWLESS
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 is 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, the prime
minister’s official country retreat. He was welcomed on the doorstep of
the house by the prime minister and his wife, Victoria Starmer.
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 will
be 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.
There’s also a lunch of Dover sole followed by key lime pie, and a
display by the Red Devils army parachute team.
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.
The two leaders will sign 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
“greeted with dismay” by the British steel industry.
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President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attend their
visit to St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, in Windsor, England,
Wednesday Sept. 17, 2025. (Aaron Chown/Pool Photo via AP)
Potentially awkward conversations
Starmer wants a successful state visit to balance weeks of bad news
that saw him lose not just an ambassador but Deputy Prime Minister
Angela Rayner — who quit over a tax error on a home purchase — and a
senior aide. 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.
Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs, said the trip was 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.
Starmer will be bracing for awkward questions about Jeffrey Epstein
when he and Trump hold a news conference at Chequers. 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.
Questions about Epstein overshadowed Trump's last visit to the U.K.
in July, when he sat with Starmer at his golf club in Scotland. As
they took questions from journalists, Trump was repeatedly peppered
with queries about Epstein as his government faced pressure from
back home to release government records into the criminal case of
the now-disgraced financier, who authorities say killed himself in
2019.
Difficult discussions on Ukraine, Middle East
There are also potentially difficult conversations to be had over
Ukraine and the Middle East.
Starmer 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. As he left
Washington for the U.K. on Tuesday, Trump appeared to put the onus
on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying, “He's going to
have to make a deal.”
Last week’s Russian drone incursion into NATO member Poland drew
strong condemnation from European NATO allies, and pledges of more
planes and troops for the bloc’s eastern flank. Trump played down
the incident’s severity, musing that it “ could have been a mistake.
”
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.”
Starmer also departs from Trump on Israel’s war in Gaza, and has
said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state at the
United Nations later this month.
Trump has threatened to penalize Canada during trade negotiations
for making a similar move.
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AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this story.
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