Industry figures suspected something was afoot on Apr. 30, when senior figures — including Bryant Trick, assistant U.S. trade representative, and Graham Floater, the DBT’s director for U.S. trade — failed to show at a dialogue for the two nations’ small and medium-sized businesses in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Officially the reason was a transport hiccup, but one person with knowledge of the meeting said: “I thought it was one of the signs that significant progress was being made. It really, really tightened up over the last couple of weeks.”
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’s Mansion House gala — speaking in excited but hushed tones to the business elite — after working on the deals with India and the U.S. at the same time.
“She is the engine room of DBT’s trade negotiations,” said one industry figure. A second added: “Amanda is a very cool operator. She of course was having to multitask to get the India agreement over the line as well.”
Another figure at the center of negotiations was Varun Chandra, the former boss of the secretive advisory firm Hakluyt who is now Starmer’s 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.
Mandelson — who flanked Trump in the Oval Office Thursday along with Mungo Woodifield, the British Embassy’s minister counsellor for trade — was also at the center of talks. The smooth-talking operator from the days of Tony Blair’s 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’ weekend.