gotchanewsdaily.com 
After Trump won the U.S. presidential election last month, Mandelson told the Times Britain can “have our cake and eat it” on trade, building closer ties with both the EU and U.S. rather than choosing between them.
It’s a policy area the next ambassador to the U.S. will spend much of their time negotiating, with U.K. hopes of finally securing a trade deal balanced by fears Trump will carry out his threats to impose tariffs.
Dan Mullaney, a former assistant U.S. trade representative under Trump and other presidents, who crossed paths with Mandelson in Brussels, agreed with his analysis that the U.K. would not necessarily need to choose between closer ties with Washington or Brussels.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a binary choice,” he said. “You can have deeper integration with the U.S. that is consistent with a deeper integration with the EU.”
Mullaney, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, argued the Labour peer could be well placed as a middle-man between the U.K. and U.S. on trade.
“Having someone from the U.K. here in Washington who knows all three systems — the EU system, the U.K. system, and knows the United States and knows trade — I think that’s a very useful skill set for the challenges that are to come,” he said.
