Naveena Kottoor, Andrew McCathie and Bill Smith

Donald Trump marks his first 100 days in power on Saturday with many of Washington’s European allies having had an uneasy start to relations with the new US president.

Only in Britain has the government appeared to actively embrace the Trump administration as it attempts shore up international ties ahead of exiting the European Union (EU).

Trump ruffled feathers in Brussels with his dismissal of the US-led NATO military alliance as “obsolete” while he also predicted that other nations would follow Britain out of the EU.

Trump’s move to end funding for family planning organizations around the world resulted in Europeans scrambling to cough up money to plug the gap, while US-EU talks to forge a new trade deal came to a grinding halt.

“The newly-elected US president was happy that Brexit was taking place and has asked other countries to do the same,” said an exasperated European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker last month.

“If he goes on like that, I am going to promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas, in the United States of America,” Juncker warned.

But by mid-April the dust seemed to have settled.

After the US airstrikes in Syria following the reported use of chemical weapons, the EU and NATO were supportive, albeit cautiously.

Meanwhile, Trump has become less sceptical of NATO and is even considering resurrecting the stalled US-EU trade talks, according to British media reports.

Even Juncker sees Trump with “growing benevolence” according to a recent interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica.

However, a key test of Trump’s ties to Europe is likely to come next month when he makes his first presidential visit to Europe for a NATO summit.

Berlin has also struggled to establish a dialogue with the Trump White House after the rocky start to relations between the president and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In comments dating back to his election campaign, Trump had lashed out at Germany over the size of its trade deficits, singled out Berlin for failing to meet its NATO budgetary commitments and denounced the chancellor’s liberal refugee policy as “a catastrophic mistake.”

This led Merkel to try to set the ground rules for Germany’s relationship with the new president and she hit back at his comments on terrorist attacks in Europe, declaring: “I think we Europeans hold our destiny in our own hands.”

The president’s economic nationalism and scepticism about global warming are also at odds with Merkel’s support for free trade and her backing for action to contain rising CO2 emissions.

Trump’s apparent refusal to shake hands with Merkel followed by a volatile press conference when they met in the White House last month seemed to symbolize the awkward relationship between the leaders of the world’s and Europe’s biggest economies.

But in the meantime relations between Trump and the German leader appear to have started to thaw with the two talking regularly by phone on a range of international issues such as Syria and North Korea as well as the current round of unpredictable European elections.

Trump has also dismissed talk of a difficult meeting last month with Merkel in Washington.

“We had unbelievable chemistry,” he said in a weekend interview.

In contrast to wariness in other parts of Europe, London has attempted to consolidate its role as Trump’s best friend in the region.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has even tried to cast herself as Trump’s messenger to Europe.

May told EU leaders that Trump had given her a guarantee he was “100 percent supportive of NATO” after she became the first foreign leader to visit him in office in January.

Trump also wants to recreate the closeness of US-British relations under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

“When [Trump] says that, he means he wants it to be a very special relationship and I’m confident we can make it such,” May told the Financial Times.

Trump has accepted May’s invitation, conveyed from Queen Elizabeth II, for a state visit to Britain later this year.

But following his US entry ban on citizens of seven Muslim nations, nearly two million British citizens called in an online petition for the visit to be downgraded to avoid embarrassing the monarch.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told parliament that his government opposed the entry ban but said Britain’s US alliance was of “vital importance.”

But as London’s mayor, Johnson accused Trump in 2015 of “betraying a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him frankly unfit to hold the office of president of the United States” after the New York businessman described parts of the British capital as even too dangerous for the police.

Less than a year later, as foreign secretary, Johnson said the new US president was “a dealmaker, and I think that could be a good thing for Britain.”—dpa