How Donald Trump, Theresa May are the 2017 version of '80s power couple Reagan-Thatcher

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump and Theresa May could be the new Reagan-Thatcher British Prime Minister Theresa May is the first foreign leader to visit President Trump.

LONDON — He was a skilled communicator and a celebrity. She was strong-willed and shared his disdain for big government.

They were the power political couple of the 1980s: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Now a similar pairing is emerging three decades later in President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May, who meet at the White House on Friday.

Theresa May: 'Not afraid to speak frankly' to Trump Prime Minister Theresa May told the United Kingdom's parliament she is not "afraid to speak frankly to a President of the United States", ahead of her trip to Washington to meet Donald Trump. (Jan. 25)

May arrives in Washington as the first foreign leader to meet Trump as president. Before their sitdown, she had the rare privilege of addressing congressional Republicans in Philadelphia on Thursday.

On Friday, the two leaders discussed trade, the British withdrawal from the European Union, and the future of the NATO military alliance. Trade between the two countries is worth about $187 billion, and the United States is the largest single investor in the U.K.

For the British government, the symbolism of the visit matters more than the substance because of the U.K.'s long-standing "special relationship" with its former colony.

Trump spoke to nine other world leaders in the 24 hours after his election before conversing with May. The trip helps put to rest concerns within May's ruling Conservative Party that former U.K. Independence Party chief Nigel Farage could get in the way of a strong relationship between the prime minister and Trump.

Trump had suggested shortly after his election that the anti-establishment, anti-immigration Farage should become Britain's U.S. ambassador, an idea quickly rejected by May.

More recently, Trump and May have vowed to revive the closeness of their countries during the Reagan-Thatcher years.

UK’s May praises Trump’s ‘renewal’ British Prime Minister Theresa May has embraced President Donald Trump as a friend and ally, but cautioned him not to turn his back on global institutions and long-established political values. (Jan. 26)

"We have always had a strong relationship with the United States, but under the last president (Barack Obama) there's been a sense over here that it wasn't as strong as it could be," said Conservative Party politician Iain Duncan Smith, who served in former prime minister David Cameron's Cabinet. "Obama appeared to spend the first four years in office forging relationships with everyone else. Now we have an opportunity to reinstate what we once had."

Reagan and Thatcher were ideologically and personally closer than any U.S. and British leaders since Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill during World War II. They were free-market, anti-Communist skeptics of government bureaucracies with good chemistry when dealing with the issues ranging from the Soviet Union to Northern Ireland.

"There was an incredible degree of affection — he admired her work ethic and she admired his ability to communicate with such great ease," said Conor Burns, a Conservative Party lawmaker. Burns, who got to know Thatcher late in her tenure, cautioned against drawing too many comparisons between Reagan-Thatcher and May-Trump. "We won’t know what the chemistry will be," he said.

"They are extremely different characters," said Quentin Peel, a political expert at Chatham House, a London think tank. "Reagan was a charming figure and I don't think one would use 'charm,' really, to describe Donald Trump. As for Theresa May, she's quite a cold and reserved figure and I don't think she has the same vision as Thatcher did. Margaret Thatcher had this vision of a deregulated world that she wanted to create or take Britain back to, whereas May is much more of a 'fixer,' a practical person."

"She has few friends because of her determination to push ahead with Brexit (Britain's withdrawal from the European Union). And Trump is also, quite deliberately, alienating the world with his 'America first' talk," Peel added.

"Can they be best mates? Well, they need each other," Peel said. "May wants to be able to say that Brexit isn't the disaster everyone is saying it is. Trump, too, wants a trade deal with the U.K. so he won't be presented as this 'terrible protectionist' who only wants to pick fights with people."

Hjelmgaard reported from Berlin.