‘Because I like them’: The UK has a magic formula that won over Trump

President Donald Trump’s mercurial nature and leadership style has often left global heads of state at a loss as to how to find favor with the U.S. leader, but the U.K. appears to have struck on a magic formula when it comes to winning over Trump.

Not only was the U.K. first to sign a trade deal with Trump, achieving a lower tariff rate on car and steel and exports to the States, but it also appears to have won over the president on a more instinctive and emotional level.

As Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer appeared in a jovial mood at the Group of Seven summit on Monday, having taken another step toward formalizing the U.S.-U.K. trade deal agreed in May, Trump was asked whether Britain would be protected from further tariffs.

“The U.K. is very well protected. You know why? Because I like them. That’s their ultimate protection,” Trump responded.

“I just signed it, and it’s done,” the president said, calling the agreement a “fair deal for both.”

“And we have many, many other ones coming. But you see, the level of enthusiasm is very good, but the relationship that we have is fantastic.”

That’s not a description that many global leaders can boast of when it comes to their relationships with the U.S. president. What makes it even more unusual is the fact that Trump and Starmer — the leader of the center-left Labour Party who has a legal background — are not natural political bedfellows.

Trump alluded to their different ideological backgrounds on Monday but continued to show his warmth toward the prime minister, who at one moment stopped to pick up the trade agreement that Trump had accidentally dropped while unveiling it at the G7 summit, calling him a “friend.”

“We’re very long-time partners and allies and friends, and we’ve become friends in a short period of time. He’s slightly more liberal than I am,” Trump joked.

Trump’s praise, apparently hard won and easily lost as former friends turned foes like Elon Musk might attest, is not new. Just a few weeks after taking office in January, Trump said Starmer was doing a “very good job.”

“I get along with him well. I like him a lot,” Trump said of the British leader, adding: “He’s represented his country in terms of philosophy. I may not agree with his philosophy, but I have a very good relationship with him.”

There are a number of reasons why Britain has got a magic formula to currying favor with the president, some of which are pure luck, and others are by dint of cultural practices and economic policy.

First of all, as demonstrated above, Trump appears to genuinely like Starmer, despite their very different backgrounds and personalities.

Trump spent years schmoozing in the business world, building his real estate empire before entering politics and basing his political ideology on his staunchly “America First” agenda. Starmer, a bespectacled and almost unassuming former human rights lawyer, oversaw criminal prosecutions before entering politics.

Trump was impressed by Starmer early into his second term in office, describing Starmer as “a very good person” who was doing “a very good job.”

Secondly, what undoubtedly helps the U.K., is that there is a cultural link between the U.S. and U.K., as often touted in their “special relationship.” Trump is a self-confessed Anglophile, with familial links to Britain (his mother had Scottish heritage) and he previously enjoyed the pomp, pageantry and soft power the U.K. does so well.

Trump visibly enjoyed his first state visit to the U.K. in 2019 when the late Queen Elizabeth II hosted the president and First Lady Melania Trump, and looked evidently pleased when Starmer earlier this year presented him with a hand-written letter from King Charles III inviting him to make another state visit.

Before the UK and U.S. announced a trade deal in May, Vice President JD Vance signaled one was coming because, he said, “the president really loves the United Kingdom.”

“He loved the Queen [Elizabeth II]. He admires and loves the King [Charles]. It is a very important relationship. And he’s a businessman and has a number of important business relationships in [Britain]. But I think it’s much deeper than that. There’s a real cultural affinity. And of course, fundamentally America is an Anglo country,” Vance said.

Thirdly, and far less romantically, another reason why the U.K. has a preferential relationship with the U.S. is because, putting it bluntly, it hasn’t yet got on the wrong side of Washington when it comes to trade and, for the most part, foreign policy, despite some divergences over the degree of support for Ukraine and Israel.

One of the main reasons why the U.K. was able to strike a trade deal with the U.S. so quickly was that it was already on a good footing with the Trump administration, having not run a perennial trade surplus when it comes to the exchange of goods with the U.S. — one of Trump’s biggest bugbears. Though, the president does appear to have overlooked the fact the U.K. has a trade surplus when it comes to services.

The U.K. might have also won favor with Trump when it didn’t retaliate when the U.S. imposed tariffs on it in April, albeit at the baseline level of 10%. Instead, the British government opted to calmly negotiate, rather than have a knee-jerk reaction that could have driven a wedge between London and Washington, and Starmer and Trump.