U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May discussed finalizing the details of Trump's first visit to Britain later this year after a meeting in Davos on Thursday, May’s office said, according to Reuters.
Trump was expected to travel to England in February, his first trip to Britain since taking office last January, but he abruptly cancelled the trip earlier this month, writing in tweet that the cancellation was due to a “bad deal” for a new U.S. embassy in London.
“Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for ‘peanuts,’ only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!,” he wrote.
The decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Britain from Grosvenor Square across the Thames to Nine Elms Lane was actually made during the last months of the Bush administration in 2008. At the time, officials cited security concerns, claiming that the existing structure could not be properly reinforced.
Trump and May met at the World Economic Forum and they discussed Brexit, Iran, and worries that jobs could be lost at Canadian plane-maker Bombardier’s factory in Northern Ireland due to a trade dispute with Boeing Co.
“The PM and president concluded by asking officials to work together on finalizing the details of a visit by the president to the UK later this year,” said a statement from May’s office as quoted by Reuters.
The statement did not say whether it would be a normal visit or the state visit offered to Trump when May visited him in Washington shortly after his inauguration last year.
While May was the first foreign leader to visit Trump after his inauguration last January, there have been a series of disagreements between the two.
British officials have been dismayed by some of Trump’s pronouncements, most recently when the president rebuked May on Twitter after she criticized him for retweeting a series of videos posted by the leader of an extremist British political group.
At the same time, May recently pushed back on claims that Trump’s fitness to serve is in doubt, following the release of a controversial new book on the Trump administration.
“When I deal with President Trump what I see is somebody who is committed to ensuring that he is taking decisions in the best interests of the United States,” said May.