US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty America and the UK have announced a $42 billion (£31 billion) trade pact, funded by Microsoft, Google, and others, that predicts bit barns will spring up over Britain's green and pleasant Land. But there's a lot more than money involved. The Brits are billing the Tech Prosperity Deal as a "historic" event in transatlantic …
This isn’t investment, it’s extraction. Tax-shy Microsoft and Google don’t drop £31 billion out of goodwill - they’ll pull multiples of that back out of the UK economy in rents, licensing, GPU leases and offshore profits. We’ll be left with hulking barns full of obsolete kit, ballooning energy bills, and no domestic industry because every local contender was smothered under the weight of subsidised US hyperscalers.
The government dresses this up as “prosperity,” but it’s the behaviour of a drunk pawning the family silver for a night’s fix. A short burst of headlines, a long hangover of dependency and debt. The only real growth here is in America’s balance sheet.
The bigger issue isn’t just jobs, it’s capital flight. These hyperscaler services come with fat markups, and with no British alternative the billions our firms spend on servers and compute will simply leak out of the UK economy. The scraps left behind - a handful of salaries and PAYE - won’t even register compared to the outflow.
Think of these “grand projects” not as engines of growth but as black holes: they suck money, talent, and opportunity inward, leaving nothing circulating locally. And that’s before you even count the opportunity cost of killing off domestic operators - or the small matter of the Cloud Act, where anything stored here is Washington’s to rummage through.
Your PM and king are kissing up to Trump, hoping it helps them but he's going to tout the nutjob guy in the next election, and he only cares about King Charles because he likes having his ass kissed by kings.
They haven't learned the most important lesson about Trump: he demands loyalty from everyone but returns it to no one. Nor does he abide by any deal he makes. You'd be better off if you'd told him to F-off and when he announces big tariffs in revenge just shrug them off and shift to buying stuff from the rest of the world until he suffers the big heart attack or stroke we're all hoping for.
You're still in the Neville Chamberlain phase of dealing with him right now.
Vance is not a problem. He's a complete tool but he has zero personal magnetism to make MAGA blindly follow him the way they follow Trump. He'd face multiple primary challengers if Trump dies and he takes office before 2028. I don't know who would win the nomination, but it wouldn't be him.
Trump chose him specifically because he isn't well liked. He doesn't want someone popular sharing the spotlight with him, he has to have all the attention and adulation.
"You're still in the Neville Chamberlain phase of dealing with him right now."
Not really, Chamberlain knew that appeasement would not in fact buy "peace in our time", but needed time for Britain's rearmament programme to deliver. The man rarely gets any credit for this, but if war had broken out in 1938, German forces would have been fighting a British air force whose aircraft were primarily biplanes and the British army was barely able to in a similar situation of inadequate scale and equipment). That would not have gone well.
Unfortunately, our current crop of "leaders" aren't buying time, as they have no plan for anything, be that growth, defence, energy, trade & industry, immigration, housing, health and social care, or fiscal stability. We've had the global embarrassment of said leaders fawning over Epstein's stupid orange pal, and in return we get nothing. If anything, our politicians are increasing their dependency on US tech, and inviting US tech companies to build huge data centres that our power grid can't reliably support and which will create neither tax revenues for the British government, or any credible number of jobs. This isn't helped by the fact that the present UK government is barely more stable than France's dysfunctional government.
It's quite amusing that Trump has been boasting about foreign nations investing in the US, when this sees US money coming into the UK, but most of it is just political theatre and BS. The big numbers don't happen. We are in a post-truth age, and all we get from our politicians now is Orwellian-style propaganda about our glorious futures.
AI will have some niche value, but it isn't the game changing magic it is billed as. Eventually the BS Express will hit the buffers and the bubble will deflate.
Don't worry about a US takeover. There isn't anything worth taking over. The UK doesn't have the resources to sustain a lot of this, and if the lights go out or the taps run dry, the government will collapse before the next election.
In the UK, turn the news off. It is just fantasy. Concentrate on retrenching your business to survive the rising costs, debased currency, lack of staff and even worse disasters we'll face when Labour is replaced by Reform. The UK committed economic suicide at Brexit. It is now in zombie mode. Worse to come.
"The UK committed economic suicide at Brexit."
That was phase 2. Phase 1 was Brownomics - get the future to pay for Blair's electoral bribes.
Expand Universities beyond reasonable sizes, paid for by student debt and making a degree the entry level for jobs which were by no stretch of the imagination graduate jobs.
Tax future pensions now by cancelling tax relief on dividends in the funds' holdings.
Set the Bank to tie interest rates to a measure of inflation that excluded housing costs resulting in cheap loans being ploughed into inflating house prices leading into a financial crash, a legacy of housing the kids can't afford to buy and a stagnant economy.
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"The UK committed economic suicide at Brexit"
Well, comparing most recent GDP to pre-pandemic, Britain has achieved a lacklustre 4.5% growth so maybe you have a point. But that's still a smidge better than Japan (+4.2%), a bit behind France (+5.2%), but substantially better than Germany on +0.1%. IMF growth forecasts for the G7 for 2025 also anticipate better growth for the UK than for any of the European G7, or the Eurozone as a whole. GDP per capita data isn't that different, either.
Facts can be so unsettling I find.
"We’ll be left with hulking barns full of obsolete kit,.."
That's assuming, of course, that these pledges will actually materialize. As everyone knows by now, all it takes to make the orange-utan happy is a few unrealistic promises that he can take home and present as the Biggest Win Ever on his own Untruth Antisocial media platform, and leave it at that. Simply "run into unforeseen delays" or just keep your head down and wait for him to become obsessed with something else, and eventually the whole problem will go away.
I'll believe these pledges when I see them turn into actual fact in the cold hard light of day..
Unfortunately, "I'll believe these pledges when I see them turn into actual fact in the cold hard light of day.." is about the only statement I've seen that reliably summarises the Orange Turnip's history to date.
I've yet to read anything about him that gives a fair picture of his business activities apart from him:
- getting kickstarted with a large pile of dosh from his dad,
- building a few casinos in Atlantic City that went bust
- hosting a TV series
- building Trump Tower and a few few golf courses.
As for his political activities, 'erratic' seems to describe them best. It would seem unlikely that he'll ever be in the "Best US presidents" list.
We know how this one goes: the UK freely shares its IP, the US promises to send back anything it develops from it - and forgets to include "freely" in its half of the agreement.
We remember what happened with the jet engine. And the atomic bomb.
And the fact this snake oil conman with a criminal record and who is a know paedophile is even allowed intro this country should tell you everything you to know about the current government. Considering these are the same arseholes that at the behest of Carnegie UK (https://youtu.be/lJ2AokZujC0), forced the uk online safety act on the populace - double standards much...
But yes, giving Micro$haft even more money is myopic, when here are so many data privacy alternatives in Europe available.
Don't want to spoil your next visit to the pub...
Icon in above post was a reference to beer slops...
Still an issue, looks like there's an application of technology now...
https://www.weeklygripe.co.uk/edinburgh-pubs-autovac-beer-slops
We can expect the same with any deal where Trump is involved.
Beware a Trump bearing gifts
'He warned Britain was being “defanged” by simply fostering a greater reliance on the US tech sector, rather than building its own.'
Is this the same Clegg who took his millions of dollars from Facebook?
'He also revealed former US ambassador Peter Mandelson had asked for his advice on the tech sector before the Trump visit. Clegg said he advised the peer to be cautious about US-UK tech tie-ups.'
The terminally blind leading the terminally lame.
Legoland, Windsor is where the old Windsor Safari Park used to be.
Trump's carriage ride yesterday was confined to the Windsor Castle grounds.
It's a bit like going to a place like Kenya and going on "Safari" to a zoo see animals in cages.
Only, in the case of Trump, he couldn't venture out for his own safety due to the hostile natives of Britain.
May be they took him to Legoland Windsor after closing to have a mini tour of Britain
Anyone who agrees to a deal with the Orange Paedo is only doing it to fill their own pockets. There is naught guarantee of any of these deals happening based on O.P. history of doing whatever the fuck he wants so why would anyone who gives a dam about the populations future and wellbeing even get in the same room as the criminal?
What's in it for me and screw everyone else eg. the UK voters - Musk showed its fine to do this, and he did it because Paddington Unbearable showed the world you can do whatever the fuck you want without any repercussions.
>only doing it to fill their own pockets
I loath Starmer and his clown show of a government but the suggestion that he is only agreeing to these deals to line his own pocket is beyond naive.
He is doing it because
1. it makes great headlines which most people won't question
2. he has personally bought into the AI bullshit and thinks it's going to rescue the economy.
in the space of 8 hours, Ive seen £40 billion, £125 billion, £150 billion, £250 billion.
methinks its so bullshit & firms like microshit making random figures promises so that the uk will buy its shite while europe its doing is best to get off their crap software.
69% of tech leaders want data sovereignty, something you can't get from aws, microsoft or google & they want that sweet sweet government cash.
only the british government are stupid enough to put nationally important stuff on US public cloud. And don't forget microshit allowed chinese engineers to work on Azure that was hosting DoD infrastructure.
Seems like the truth can be found by simply moving a comma in this statement -
"This Tech Prosperity Deal marks a generational step change in our relationship with the US, shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic,"
to
"This Tech Prosperity Deal marks a generational step change in our relationship, with the US shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic,"
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