SMILE, FLATTER, BARTER How the world is prepping for Trump 2.0

When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City for dinner on Sept 26, it was part of a British charm offensive to nurture a relationship between a left-wing leader and a right-wing potential president.

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So, when Trump turned to Mr Starmer before parting and told him, "We are friends," according to a person involved in the evening, it did not go unnoticed.

Whether they stay friends is anybody's guess.

For months leading up to Trump's political comeback - and in the heady days since his victory was confirmed - foreign leaders have rushed, once again, to ingratiate themselves with him. Their emissaries have cultivated people in Trump's orbit or with think tanks expected to be influential in setting policies for a second Trump administration.

Some leaders, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, are crafting their pitches to appeal to Trump's transactional nature; others, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have deployed teams of officials to the United States to visit dozens of Republican leaders in the hope that they can moderate Trump's most radical instincts on imposing tariffs.

History suggests that many of these bridge-building efforts will fail. By the end of his first term, Trump had soured on several leaders with whom he started off on good terms. His protectionist trade policy and aversion to alliances - coupled with a mercurial personality - fuelled clashes that overrode the rapport that the leaders had labored to cultivate.

"There were two misapprehensions about Trump," Mr Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister of Australia, said in an interview. "The first was - he would be different in office than he was on the campaign trail. The second was - the best way to deal with him was to suck up to him."

In January 2017, Mr Turnbull had a notoriously hostile phone call with Trump over whether the US would honor an Obama-era deal to accept 1,250 refugees, which Trump opposed, even though the US did end up taking them. Mr Turnbull said he later found other common ground with Trump, even talking him out of imposing tariffs on some Australian exports.