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Good morning and welcome to White House Watch. Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer are today holding talks at Chequers, the UK prime minister’s country estate. In the meantime, we’ll catch up on last night’s lavish state banquet for the US president at Windsor Castle.
King Charles hosted about 160 guests, including top US and UK government officials and business leaders. Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman sat next to Starmer at the banquet table, while Tim Cook of Apple, Rupert Murdoch of News Corp, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Jane Fraser of Citigroup were also in attendance.
Trump heaped praise on the US-UK relationship during a speech to open the banquet, where guests were served a “transatlantic whisky sour” cocktail created for the occasion.
“The bond of kinship and identity between America and the United Kingdom is priceless and eternal. It’s irreplaceable and unbreakable,” he said.
King Charles, for his part, praised the US president’s “personal commitment” to peacemaking efforts, which are struggling to bear fruit in both Gaza and Ukraine. But the royal acclaim would have been music to Trump’s ears.
However, the pomp and celebration at Windsor Castle may have been the high point of Trump’s visit. Today, he is holding potentially tense talks with Starmer about the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, all with the legacy of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein casting a shadow over the event. (The prime minister was forced last week to sack Lord Peter Mandelson, his ambassador to the US, because of his links to Epstein.)
Trump and Starmer will be counting on a business roundtable — and a wave of US investment in Britain — to bring them together. Downing Street has touted £150bn worth of deals to be announced during the state visit, including plans by Blackstone to invest £100bn in the UK over the next decade.
Do you have any thoughts on US politics? FT journalists will take your hardest questions and answer them on the Swamp Notes podcast, our show about the intersection of money and power in Washington. Send them to our producer, Henry, at henry.larson@ft.com.
The latest headlines
Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night television show has been pulled off the air “indefinitely” by Disney-owned ABC after comments he made about the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The move to pull Kimmel’s show comes as some people — on both sides of the political divide — fear a White House assault on free speech may be under way.
After Trump filed a $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times, the newspaper’s chief accused the president of enacting an “anti-press playbook” at an FT conference.
The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates for the first time this year, reducing borrowing costs by a quarter point amid growing worries about the jobs market. Trump has attacked the Fed for months, insisting that the central bank should drastically lower borrowing costs.
Revenue from Trump’s tariffs could fund a bailout for US farmers facing falling export sales and rising input costs, agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins told the FT.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s chief of staff is set to take on a top job at the IMF, giving the Trump administration more sway at an organisation it has criticised.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has given public companies a powerful new tool to curb shareholder lawsuits, as chair Paul Atkins pledged to “make IPOs great again”.
Viewpoints
Trump is far from the only one to rail against quarterly earnings, but this is the wrong time to be tinkering with US disclosure rules, writes Brooke Masters.
Forget the “special relationship”, writes Peter Westmacott, a former UK ambassador to the US. Trump is proudly transactional, and it’s time for Britain to behave similarly.
The British right’s hatred of interference in national affairs disappears when US conservatives are doing it, writes Janan Ganesh.
More American workers are considering a career outside the US to escape what some see as an increasingly toxic political landscape under Trump.
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