Trump will visit in February – but he won’t meet Queen
DONALD Trump last night told Theresa May he will visit Britain in the new year – despite warnings he could face the biggest protests since the Iraq War.
In a phone call to Mrs May, the US President confirmed he will press ahead with a ‘working visit’ to London pencilled in for late February.
He will use the trip to open the new US embassy in London, while he is also expected to hold talks with the Prime Minister in Downing Street.
But a planned meeting with the Queen will not take place until he makes a full state visit – plans for which are on ice.
The President’s visit to the UK comes despite a series of public clashes with Mrs May, including a major row last month when the Prime Minister condemned Mr Trump’s decision to re-tweet anti-Muslim propaganda from far-Right group Britain First.
The PM was also critical of Mr Trump recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – a move the UK views as damaging to hopes for a two-state solution.
No mention of Mr Trump’s trip to the UK was made in read-outs of the call released by No 10 and the White House.
But a Whitehall source said Mr Trump had told the PM he would be visiting Britain for the opening of the £750million American embassy, as reported in the Mail this month.
Earlier this year more than a million people signed a petition calling for a planned state visit to be cancelled – raising the prospect that Mr Trump could spark the biggest protests since the Iraq War when 1million protested in London.
The new US embassy has a moat, toughened glass that can withstand a rocket-propelled grenade and even its own contingent of US Marines. The building’s architect James Timberlake described it as ‘the safest building in Britain’.
However, moving Mr Trump around London is likely to prove a major security headache. The President showed his displeasure at recent criticism from Mrs May by making her wait 13 days to discuss Israel.
When the two leaders finally spoke last night they tried to paper over their differences.
Mr Trump noted the UK had backed a United Nations Security Council resolution, vetoed by the US, which rejected the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Mrs May told him the UK ‘doesn’t agree’ with the move, but she looked forward to seeing promised US plans for peace in the region. The Prime Minister made no mention of the Twitter row which sparked fresh calls for Mr Trump to be banned from Britain.
After Mrs May criticised him for re-tweeting Britain First hate videos, he told her: ‘Theresa May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom.’
Labour MP Barry Sheerman said any visit by Mr Trump would spark ‘unparalleled demonstrations in this country’.
The US President pulled out of a planned state visit because of concerns about protests. But diplomats have decided it is untenable for Mr Trump to indefinitely avoid visiting one of the US’s closest allies.
Government sources insisted last night’s phone call had been ‘pretty genial’, with Mr Trump said to have been interested in Mrs May’s Brexit breakthrough. No 10 said they had ‘agreed on the importance of a swift post-Brexit trade deal’.
The biggest US tax overhaul for more than three decades is set to be passed today. Opponents say the package is a giveaway to the super-rich. But Republicans argue the tax cuts for corporations, small businesses and individuals will bolster economic growth and create thousands of jobs.
The President has described the bill as a ‘Christmas gift’ for the country, but critics say it will widen the gap between the country’s rich and poor.
THE received wisdom after a turbulent few days in American politics is that Donald Trump has suffered a stinging defeat, his Republican party is in disarray, and the Democrats are on the road to recovery at the mid-term polls next year.
Well, wrong, wrong and (probably) wrong again.
It’s true that Trump backed Roy Moore, a firebrand evangelical, as the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Alabama. It is true that Moore lost last week to a Democrat.
But the President’s response should give us pause. When the votes were counted in Alabama, he phoned the winner, Doug Jones, and congratulated him warmly. He even invited him to the White House.
Poison
He has moved on — as well he might. Not having Roy Moore in Washington is a plus for Trump and for the Republicans. Yes, their Senate majority is cut to 51 against 49.
But how much trouble would it have been for the party to have Moore — a man accused of sex offences by at least seven women — in the seat of power? A man who thinks 9/11 was divine punishment. A man who wants Muslims to be secondclass citizens.
He would have been poison for the Republicans and a gift for the Democrats.
The other good news for the President is that he and the Republicans are about to have a very big day, which will surely change the subject.
For all Trump’s bluster and madcap energy, most people take a view of politics based on what’s happening in their own lives. And away from his illadvised retweets of far-Right British racists, away from the rows about him recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Donald Trump’s America is on the march.
Imagine for a moment that you work as a carpenter on an American building site. You live in upstate New York. In summer it’s sweaty, in winter it’s freezing. You work hard, as does your wife or girlfriend, who’s a waitress or a hairstylist. Neither of you went to college, but both of you want dignified jobs and a decent life.
What has happened to that couple’s lives since Donald Trump was elected? Hillary Clinton claimed during the election last year that a multimillionaire property developer like Trump would ditch the little people once he got into office. But she was wrong.
All the bleating about Trump — often from those who share his privileged background — has hidden a simple fact about his presidency: a large and important constituency believe he has delivered what he promised, in economic terms at least, and is about to deliver even more.
There is rising optimism that the tax reforms will be signed off, and that will have a huge impact on America, and possibly the wider world, which should benefit from a resurgent American economy.
This week, all three major stock exchanges in the U.S. soared to record highs. Though it is not certain what the new tax levels will be, Trump has already talked of his ‘giant’ tax cuts being a ‘ big, beautiful Christmas present’ for voters.
The suggestion is that as well as cuts at the lower pay levels, income tax for top earners might drop from 39.6 per cent to 37 per cent. Crucially, corporation tax — paid on firms’ profits — is likely to fall from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, which should spark growth and job creation.
When the final bill is passed by Congress and signed by the President, it will be a genuine political achievement.
But even before the tax cut, blue-collar America has been having a better time of it than at any stage in recent memory.
Consider if you were a cleaner or factory worker in the States. Both groups have seen their pay rise by 11 per cent in one year. Bus drivers are up more than 4 per cent. Maintenance men and women are getting more than 3 per cent extra a year. The list goes on. It includes hairdressers and waitresses and truck drivers. It certainly includes those carpenters on building sites.
No wonder consumer confidence has gone through the roof. No wonder small businesses, the engine of the U.S. economy, are reporting record investment and activity levels.
Another Trump promise was the cutting of regulations for businesses. Again he has delivered. There is less paperwork for fish farms. Easier approvals for apprenticeships. New freedom for private railways to select the trains they use.
He also promised a new age for the energy industry, and that is coming to pass, too. Fracking — a cheap, efficient means to extract shale gas and oil from the ground — has taken off after a big dip in activity when energy prices fell and it became less economic. There are more than 900 active rigs in America now, up from fewer than 600 a year ago.
With inflation still low and wages picking up, there is a sense among many ordinary Americans doing humdrum jobs that — finally — they are reaching better times. The stock market is booming at record highs, too, after climbing almost relentlessly from the day he was elected.
Benefit
And that was before the announcement that tax cuts were on the way.
Now let us be blunt about those cuts. Trump claims they won’t benefit him, but experts say the rich will do very nicely out of them. This is not a redistribution of money from rich to poor. People with private jets, for example, get new exemptions for their maintenance costs. Not very helpful if you work on a building site.
But the bill also cuts taxes for those in work but not on high pay. It will put more money in people’s pockets, and if they spend that money, the economy will benefit.
There is another aspect of Trump’s plan, however, which could provoke a sea change in the American financial landscape — and it concerns eye-watering sums of money. To be precise: $1.3 trillion.
At present, that mountain of money sits in accounts held outside America. It belongs to American companies who keep it ‘offshore’ because of the fact that they don’t pay tax on their profits unless they bring the money back into the U.S.; Apple alone has more than $200 billion stashed in this way.
Ruinous
Trump’s tax bill offers these giant firms a deal: bring your money back in, and we will tax it very lightly. His view is that it’s better to get some tax than none at all, especially if the companies spend those profits on investments in the U.S.
The President’s other hope is that American manufacturers which currently use cheap foreign labour will start giving jobs to U.S. workers instead.
So is all this too good to be true? Well, yes and no. Bluecollar workers do feel better off than they have for some time.
But if you are very poor in America — if you are unemployed and your child has a chronic illness, for example — the Trump economy is not for you, because the tax cuts don’t help those on benefits, or alter the ruinous cost of healthcare.
There are concerns, too, about the long-term cost to the nation. The plan will add a whacking trillion-and-a-half dollars over ten years to America’s debt — which already stands at $20 trillion.
The President says economic growth driven by the cuts will cover those costs. But his government may well have to recoup some of the money lost to the Treasury by removing personal tax breaks, which is most likely to disadvantage middle-class workers.
For now at least, though, the Trump economy seems to be working.
To many people watching from overseas, or from swanky parts of America, the President looks crass and foolish at best. He frightens and repels them.
But put yourself in the shoes of that carpenter in New York state: Trump seems to be delivering for you. Come 2020 and the next presidential election, you might even vote for him again, and so might your friends.