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Trump and May End Relationship That Began Strained and Only Got Worse

Next week, Trump will become the last foreign leader to visit May before she resigns as head of the Conservative Party.

Trump and May End Relationship That Began Strained and Only Got Worse
U.S. President Donald Trump, left, speaks with Theresa May, U.K. prime minister, during the plenary at the G-20 Leaders’ Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photographer: Erica Canepa/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Theresa May was the first foreign leader to visit Donald Trump after he was sworn in as president. Next week, he’ll become the last foreign leader to visit her before she resigns as head of the Conservative Party.

Trump’s second trip to the U.K. as president is built around a state visit with Queen Elizabeth and official commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. But his final meetings with May are likely to end their relationship as it began, with awkward attempts to paper over difficult personal chemistry, and protests in London.

Trump and May End Relationship That Began Strained and Only Got Worse

Before the two leaders first met in January 2017, some optimistic British officials hoped for a partnership akin to that between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. But the two countries have instead found themselves increasingly at odds on issues ranging from immigration to trade and Iran’s nuclear program. Despite the president briefly taking the prime minister’s hand on her White House visit, the relationship between the two leaders lacked any personal connection.

It never warmed, and Trump has hinted he may even meet with her political rivals during his U.K. trip.

‘Difficult Moment’

The visit comes at a “difficult moment” for May and her country, and at a time of “a lot of bilateral disagreement” between the two nations, said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

U.S. officials downplayed the chance of a significant breakthrough on any of the topics Trump and May will discuss next week, including the American effort to convince the U.K. and other allies to freeze Huawei Technologies Co. out of new 5G broadband networks. The trip is instead intended to lay groundwork for issues Trump will pursue with May’s successor, the officials told reporters.

The officials asked not to be identified as a condition of participation in the briefing.

Trump, meanwhile, said Thursday that he may meet Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage while in the U.K. Johnson is the former foreign secretary who left May’s government over her Brexit compromise and stands a good chance of succeeding her as prime minister, while Farage’s fledgling Brexit Party embarrassed May’s Tories by topping the U.K.’s May 23 elections for the European Parliament.

Trump and May End Relationship That Began Strained and Only Got Worse

Trump’s Friends

“Nigel Farage is a friend of mine, Boris is a friend of mine, they’re two very good guys, very interesting people,” Trump said. “I think they are big powers over there. Maybe it’s not my business to support people. But I have a lot of respect for both of those men.”

A U.K. official said the government hadn’t received any request or notification from the U.S. government about a meeting with Johnson or Farage. May and Trump are expected to touch on China, the Mideast, Russia, Syria and Iran in their talks, in addition to Huawei and trade, the U.K. official said.

China is the latest sticking point between the two allies.

May’s government regards the U.S. trade war with China as pointless and wasteful. And though they agree with the U.S. that China poses a serious cybersecurity risk, U.K. intelligence officials have hinted they won’t push for an outright ban on Huawei technology in 5G infrastructure.

Strategic Differences

According to Tom Tugendhat, chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, cooperation between many levels of the British and American security hierarchy remains close. But there are divergent views at the top about strategic direction.

“At an operational level, things have never been better,” he said. “But at a political level, Trump is continuing a longstanding American desire to pull back within its borders and avoid foreign entanglements. We need to consider the implications for the U.K. and our allies and position ourselves as an essential partner to enable wider cooperation.”

The U.S. president won’t be accorded some of the honors sometimes extended to dignitaries on state visits. He won’t enjoy a trip to Buckingham Palace in a gilded carriage because of security concerns; he won’t stay there because of extensive renovation; and he won’t be given the opportunity to address both Houses of Parliament because of opposition from politicians including the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.

Trump will be greeted on this trip, as he was last time, with large street protests in London. A giant balloon of Trump as a diaper-clad baby with tiny hands is expected to make a reappearance.

Strained Relationship

British popular sentiment toward the U.S. president has seeped into May’s personal relationship with him. The prime minister has been forced to speak out against Trump’s immigration policy, his criticism of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and his re-tweet of a post by the far-right group Britain First. She has remonstrated him for U.S. leaks of U.K. intelligence on the bombing of an Arianna Grande concert in Manchester.

Trump and May End Relationship That Began Strained and Only Got Worse

Even before he took office, Trump riled the U.K. government by welcoming Farage, then the acting leader of the U.K. Independence Party, to the U.S. and tweeting that Britain should make him ambassador to the U.S.

The president also publicly undermined May on his first visit to the U.K. In an interview with the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper on the eve of their official meeting, he said he didn’t think the U.S. could make a trade deal with the U.K. under the terms May had negotiated for Brexit, and mused that Johnson would make a “great” prime minister.

Contempt

British officials have privately offered a variety of views of the Trump administration, from an insistence that things are better than they seem -- which tends to lapse into an observation that the president has a unique style -- to outright contempt.

Defenders of May’s approach point to what they say are diplomatic victories: Trump’s continued engagement with NATO, and the U.S expulsion of Russian diplomats after the attempted murder of a former spy on British soil in 2018.

Their differences are sometimes less a disagreement about the nature of a problem -- on Iran, for instance, U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this month that he and his U.S. counterpart Michael Pompeo “share the same assessment of the heightened threat” -- than how to deal with it. Trump urges confrontation. May and other U.K. officials worry that will lead to escalation, and have pledged to continue working with European allies.

Shared History

For Europeans, the D-Day anniversary is about remembering the fight against fascism, and celebrating the peace since. Trump, watching the Spitfires flying overhead, may choose to see it -- as some pro-Brexit U.K. politicians do -- as a reminder of a time when Americans and Britons fought together against Europeans. He has described the EU as a worse U.S. trading partner than China, and has urged May to take a more aggressive stance in Brexit negotiations.

“I hope President Trump appreciates the full sweep of history” on his visit, Conley said. “That European unity is very much an American project, that Europeans’ prosperity and security are interlinked with America’s security and prosperity, and that this is a project that needs America’s support.

“It does not need America’s encouragement of its increasing fragility.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net;Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net;Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, ;Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs

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