Industry figures suspected something was afoot on Apr. 30, when senior figures \u2014 including Bryant Trick, assistant U.S. trade representative, and Graham Floater, the DBT\u2019s director for U.S. trade \u2014 failed to show at a dialogue for the two nations\u2019 small and medium-sized businesses in Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Officially the reason was a transport hiccup, but one person with knowledge of the meeting said: \u201cI thought it was one of the signs that significant progress was being made. It really, really tightened up over the last couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several people said a key figure in sealing the deal was civil servant Amanda Brooks, the DBT director general for trade negotiations. She was visibly buzzing in a red dress at Wednesday\u2019s Mansion House gala \u2014 speaking in excited but hushed tones to the business elite \u2014 after working on the deals with India and the U.S. at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is the engine room of DBT\u2019s trade negotiations,\u201d said one industry figure. A second added: \u201cAmanda is a very cool operator. She of course was having to multitask to get the India agreement over the line as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another figure at the center of negotiations was Varun Chandra, the former boss of the secretive advisory firm Hakluyt who is now Starmer\u2019s business adviser in No. 10. Chandra was in regular contact with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, as was Reynolds. The Guardian reported that Chandra was in the U.S. to seal the deal this week.<\/p>\n
Mandelson \u2014 who flanked Trump in the Oval Office Thursday along with Mungo Woodifield, the British Embassy\u2019s minister counsellor for trade \u2014 was also at the center of talks. The smooth-talking operator from the days of Tony Blair\u2019s government asked business groups in private what he could offer the U.S., and used his lavish residence to full effect, hosting three parties in four days over the White House correspondents\u2019 weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Industry figures suspected something was afoot on Apr. 30, when senior figures \u2014 including Bryant Trick, assistant U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[3971,1212,1213,6904,6850,802,748,943,346,31314,3677,7157,32,393,40891,1214,6644,4884,730,806,41164,1443,807,1198,2129,2441,839,809,384,1144,23740,5111,28300,47,7697,619,48,332,5549,712,1199,1218,479,1200,53,27005,1201,6862,1263,2004,16,657,15,49,2601,1764,771,6507],"class_list":{"0":"post-85502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-agriculture","11":"tag-aluminum","12":"tag-americas","13":"tag-barack-obama","14":"tag-beef","15":"tag-brexit","16":"tag-britain","17":"tag-canada","18":"tag-cars","19":"tag-department-for-business-and-trade","20":"tag-digital","21":"tag-digital-markets-act","22":"tag-donald-trump","23":"tag-england","24":"tag-ethanol","25":"tag-exports","26":"tag-farmers","27":"tag-great-britain","28":"tag-india","29":"tag-industry","30":"tag-john-whittingdale","31":"tag-jonathan-reynolds","32":"tag-keir-starmer","33":"tag-kemi-badenoch","34":"tag-mark-carney","35":"tag-markets","36":"tag-middle-east","37":"tag-negotiations","38":"tag-nigel-farage","39":"tag-northern-ireland","40":"tag-online-safety","41":"tag-parliament","42":"tag-peter-mandelson","43":"tag-poll","44":"tag-ports","45":"tag-rachel-reeves","46":"tag-rights","47":"tag-russia","48":"tag-safety","49":"tag-scotland","50":"tag-services","51":"tag-steel","52":"tag-tariffs","53":"tag-tax","54":"tag-technology","55":"tag-tony-blair","56":"tag-trade","57":"tag-trade-agreements","58":"tag-transport","59":"tag-tunnels","60":"tag-uk","61":"tag-ukraine","62":"tag-united-kingdom","63":"tag-united-states","64":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","65":"tag-wales","66":"tag-war","67":"tag-water"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}