Leadership1 publisher3 min readPublished
Trump rejects the global AI rules Burnham wants to lead the G20 on
Their first face-to-face meeting produced warm words and three live splits. The one with a written requirement behind it is a Finnish and Norwegian plan, backed by more than 20 countries, to gate model launches on safety testing.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- At their first face-to-face meeting, Trump said his relationship with the UK is more up with Andy Burnham than it was under Keir Starmer. He said it despite tensions over AI regulation, the Chagos islands and Iran.
- Burnham told business leaders he wants a single set of global principles and standards to guard against rogue AI. He said the issue would be a main focus of the UK's G20 presidency next year.
- Trump, who has called warnings about AI's existential threat to humanity a hoax, used his UN speech to intensify his criticism of attempts to regulate the technology.
- Burnham travelled to New York planning to urge Trump to de-escalate in Iran. Middle East turmoil is pushing up global energy prices and putting the UK economy under intense pressure.
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Why it matters
- constraint Should the UK join the Finnish and Norwegian plan, a developer would need pre-launch safety clearance for the UK market that the US president has said his government will not impose. A single global launch date stops working.
- cost Trump ties lower prices to the end of the war, and has floated a deal only after November. So UK households and industrial energy buyers carry the war premium through this quarter and into the next.
- decision Whether to take a second look at the Chagos settlement is now a live choice for Burnham. He nodded when Trump said in front of cameras that he would be looking at it.
Of the three disagreements, the AI one is the only one with a written requirement behind it. Finland and Norway are leading an initiative, backed by more than 20 countries, to bar AI companies from launching their models commercially without submitting them for safety testing first, and Burnham is under pressure to sign [14]. Signing is still an open question for him. Trump's position is on the record from the podium. "The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now. We're going to encourage it, not rein it in," he said [11]. He added that he was "not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution" [13].
On energy the gap is a gap in timing. Trump repeated his threat to "annihilate" Iran and said he would "drive them into hell" if it did not back down and sign a peace deal with the US [7]. Asked whether he had any sympathy with allies feeling cost-of-living pain as a result of his actions, he said "as soon as the war is over the prices are going to come way down" [8]. He has suggested Iran could agree to a deal after the US midterms in November. He also said "people understand" the need to prevent Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon even if that meant price hikes at the pumps and in shops [9]. Read those two statements in order and the earliest relief on his own account arrives after November [20].
Chagos is the one place where the movement Trump wanted got a signal. "I don't support it. I think it's terrible. It was a terrible deal," he said of the arrangement that hands sovereignty to Mauritius while the UK pays to lease Diego Garcia [15]. He then said: "It's amazing how strategic it is, and I think the prime minister is going to be looking at it." Burnham nodded and said "yeah" [16]. The Guardian's account does not say the UK has reopened the deal.
Officials in the UK delegation reacted with relief that the talks appeared to have gone according to plan [5]. A president who had previously dismissed Burnham as "extremely liberal" [19] called him a "natural businessperson" with "lots of assets on his side" who would be a "great" prime minister [3]. The countable return from the meeting was one favour. Trump is understood to have agreed to a request from Burnham to raise the case of imprisoned Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai with Xi Jinping on Thursday. British officials in the meeting suggested Lai could live in the UK [18]. He avoided commenting on the UK's ban on trade with West Bank settlements and left that question to Burnham [17].
The trade-off shows in what each side asked for. Burnham came with two asks, de-escalation in Iran and international machinery for AI, and Trump answered both in public by restating his threat to Tehran and his rejection of global AI control [7][11]. Trump came with one, a second look at Chagos, and got a nod. If Burnham signs the safety-testing initiative during the UK's G20 year, London becomes the pre-market gate for models that Washington has said it will not gate.
What to watch
- Whether any US model developer submits to a foreign pre-launch safety test while Washington objects to one.
- Whether the Diego Garcia lease payments continue as signed or the Mauritius settlement is renegotiated.
- Any Iranian move toward talks before November would test Trump's price claim earlier than he set it.