Exclusive — British Ambassador to U.S. Lord Peter Mandelson: ‘The King Is Going to Roll Out the Red Carpet for President Trump’ in State Visit

“I think it’s very important that Britain went first,” Mandelson said. “We showed the rest of the world that by negotiation, by cooperation, by give and take, you could reach an agreement with the United States in this new trade era that the President is ushering in. It was a tough negotiation, I don’t disguise that, but we already had a fair and balanced reciprocal trade relationship between our countries. But the President wanted to balance it even further. There are certain things that we wanted to make sure that we were protected in and that we were able to point to benefits for both our economies and that’s what we did. Other countries have since followed, and in the process the President has—well, if he hasn’t rewritten the rules of international trade, he’s certainly rebalanced the behavior and many of the practices of international trade. But what remains is taking on the very unbalanced trade relationship that not only the U.S., but many of us have with China. China’s whole economic model has been about growing its industrial base, investing in it, subsidizing it, going way beyond the needs of their own economy, and then expecting the rest of the world to take their surplus, to take their excess capacity and their exports and just suck it up whatever the effect and impact on our own economies or our own industries and our own people’s jobs. Now I don’t think that’s acceptable, and the President has taken a lead in telling China that that’s not acceptable, and he expects a different approach and different behavior—and we support him in that. That’s what we want to see.”

Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle (R) interviews British Ambassador to the United States Lord Peter Mandelson (L) on Thursday, August 4, 2025, at the British Embassy in Washington, DC. (British Embassy Washington)

Specifically on China, Mandelson said what he thinks Trump wants to achieve is a rebalancing of the communist regime’s relationship with the West.

“I don’t think the President wants to upend the relationship with China,” Mandelson said. “He doesn’t want to go to war with China. He doesn’t want to plunge the world into the chaos that would flow if America went head to head with China, but he is right in demanding a rebalancing. He is right in demanding a different economic approach by China that no longer expects us to pay the price—and it’s a big price in trade—for their economic development. I think he is right to draw attention to the fact that on the back of their growing economy, they’re expanding their military, their army, their navy in dramatic terms. We saw all that displayed this week on the streets of Beijing, but also that China is getting together with a lot of bad actors. Prominent on display is Russia, Putin, who’s invaded Ukraine. Iran, exporting terror. North Korea and their missile program, threatening the entire Asia Pacific. Now I think the President is right to call out these people, and one of the things that Britain and America have in common is that we both believe in strong defense and national security. We believe that you achieve peace by having effective deterrence towards these bad actors. We also agree, incidentally, that Europe needs to step up and spend more on its own defense. But I think that when it comes to China, we’ve got to do these two things: Call out their trade practices and secondly make sure that they do not come to dominate the world in the advanced critical technologies that are now being developed like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, bioscience. You know, if China succeeds in getting ahead of us in these critical technologies and is able to dominate the world technologically, then that’s going to affect every facet of our lives. We’ve got to come together, collaborate more and make sure that that doesn’t happen. As two science-rich nations, the U.S. and the U.K., I want us to be doing much more to make sure that China does not win the technology race.”

Mandelson told Breitbart News, too, that the mandates on which Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer were elected are “very similar,” and that Trump is “very attuned” to where the American public is at on major issues like the economy, crime, and immigration. He advised world leaders to follow Trump’s and Starmer’s leads on actually listening to voters or find themselves on the wrong side of those voters in their next elections.

President Donald Trump meets with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the Oval Office at the White House on February 27, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“Well, I think the President is doing two things: At home, he is very attuned to public dissatisfaction and anger about the broken economy that isn’t working for them, illegal migration that’s become uncontrolled, crime that needs to be tackled, and also a political system that’s not delivering properly for working people,” Mandelson said. “Now, he’s heard this, and he’s responding to it and not everyone likes you know how he’s doing so and they feel that some of the measures he’s taking are too tough or the rhetoric accompanying them is too brutal or whatever. But people in my country and in Europe have got to understand that he is responding with determination to the dissatisfaction and the demands he’s heard from American working people—and exactly the same goes for Keir Starmer, our prime minister and government in Britain. They were both elected last year on very similar mandates, whether it be on the economy or migration or crime or politics in general needing to be fixed—very similar mandates. They may not have identical political philosophies. They may disagree on some things, but not on the fundamentals. I sometimes feel that there are people in Europe who are sniffy and snooty a bit about some of the President’s actions and some of the things he’s saying. Well, frankly, I think those same people have got to become more in touch with their own publics. Listen to what voters are saying and deliver change that they’re demanding. If they don’t, they’re going to find themselves turfed out of office at the next ballot.”

About immigration in particular, Mandelson said world leaders must stop illegal immigration if they want to have the credibility to set legal immigration policy.

“Can I just say about immigration: Unchecked illegal migration angers people. Okay? They feel people are getting in under the wire, they are abusing the country they’re entering, and they’re looking for a free ride when they get here,” Mandelson said. “Okay? Now, not all migration is bad. You know, it benefits our economies and societies in many ways. But it needs to be managed. It needs to be controlled. If you don’t control illegal migration, then you don’t get permission from the public to manage the legal migration that actually brings benefits. So if we want to have the benefits, we’ve got to deal with the unchecked illegal migration. Otherwise we won’t take the public with us.”

Throughout history, there have been powerful pairings of U.S. presidents and British prime ministers like most famously Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher. It’s Churchill who first coined the phrase “special relationship” to describe the partnership between the U.S. and U.K., a term he developed when he visited the states. This embassy, with its grand gardens and patio, once played host to the then-former British Prime Minister coming over to address that special relationship. Asked about these pairings throughout history of presidents from here in the U.S. and British prime ministers, Mandelson—who worked for Tony Blair in the past in a very senior capacity—noted that Blair and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also had a close relationship and then he explained what is working between Trump and Starmer right now.

“I think what’s striking about their relationship [Trump and Starmer] is that, first of all, they like each other and talk to each other in a respectful and interested way,” Mandelson said. “Secondly, on the fundamentals, they agree, whether it be at home or internationally. Thirdly, they both are committed to sustaining that unique, special relationship that we have between our two countries. I would like to see them deepen their relationship. I’d like to see them do more together. The Prime Minister, our prime minister, is doing a lot, for example, to bring the European countries together and getting them pointing in the right direction for example over defense spending and Ukraine. I think there are other areas where our interests come together, our policies align, but it always takes that just bit more effort to make sure that where there are differences—and they’re not big—they are nonetheless smoothed out. We make sure that we show the rest of the world that the West is coming together, that we do have common interests, that we are going to stand up for those interests and for our values, and we’re not simply going to be rolled over by China, Russia, or any of these other people who want to push us around.”

A couple weeks ago, after Trump’s historic summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, he hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a bevy of European leaders including Starmer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and others at the White House. Starmer was instrumental in helping make this happen and Mandelson noted that the presence of Merz at this table of leaders was also extremely important for Western Civilization.

“Now coming, I think Merz in Germany is playing an important role,” Mandelson said. “I say this partly because Britain and Germany seem to see eye to eye on a lot—and Merz and Starmer have struck up a good relationship—but I think it’s very important for the European nations, very important for the EU, to have a bit of German common sense rising to the surface in their deliberations.”

When asked what he thought of Trump’s summit with European leaders at the White House, Mandelson told Breitbart News it showed how bold the president is.

“It showed that the President is prepared to take a risk when it comes to helping to solve these issues and stop these wars and bring people together,” Mandelson said. “I’ve seen so many politicians and leaders in my time agonizing: Shall we take this initiative? Shall we call these people together? Let’s think about it a bit longer. Let’s sort of have a bit more sort of policy analysis. That analysis very quickly turns into analysis paralysis. Now, the president trusts his gut. He trusts his instincts. He seems to have an iron clad stomach for risk when it comes to convening people or intervening or dealing as he did with Iran’s nuclear program or the other day with that drugs cache that was being brought to the U.S. from Venezuela. There are a lot of people who would sort of hum and haw and say, ‘oh, well, you know, there’s this downside, there’s this risk, or this person won’t like it, or, you know, will I be criticized for being too strong? Should I wait a bit? Shall I wait for the evidence?’ Sometimes you have to take some pretty quick direct action and, yes, sometimes you will make mistakes. Sometimes you will do things that perhaps with greater reflection you wouldn’t have decided to do. But, quite honestly, if we are in Britain—and I say this for Europe as well—if we’re going to be tied to a stronger country, an ally like the United States, I would rather see that country use its might and use its power for all our good rather than step back, agonize over whether it’s taking the right decision or making the right choice, and then end up doing nothing. If you’ve got an ally like the United States and sometimes let’s face it force does have to be used in international affairs. I’d rather see that ally prepared to use that force than forego it whenever the risk seems too great.”

British Ambassador to the United States Lord Peter Mandelson (L) and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle (R) on Thursday, August 4, 2025, at the British Embassy in Washington, DC. (British Embassy Washington)

Mandelson added as well regarding China, which seems to be the real focus of Trump’s trade efforts, that the goal is to restructure or rebalance the relationship.

“Look, we all trade with China. China is a huge economy. It’s second in size to that of the United States. Of course, none of us are going to boycott the Chinese economy,” Mandelson said. “We trade with China, we invest in China. But here’s the point I want to make to you: We’ve become over-exposed and over-dependent on supply from China. It’s not healthy for our economies, partly because you can’t always rely on them not indefinitely not in every scenario. Secondly, it’s eating too much into our own supply, into our own industry, our own manufacturing. So I think rebalancing is needed and we’ve got to step back, take a take a good, long, hard look at the extent to which over recent decades that we have become too reliant on China and insufficiently reliant on our own production, our own output, and our own supply. So I think that all of us sort of experienced a wake up call about this. It doesn’t mean to say that we want to go to war with China, or you want to ostracize China, or whatever, but we’ve just got to look very carefully at the position we find ourselves in and whether it’s healthy for us both economically but also from the point of view of our security to have become quite so exposed and quite so dependent on Chinese production. I think the answer that most people will reach is that we need to redress this. We need to rebalance it. That’s, I think, the message which is now landing amongst many political leaders in the West.”

A huge focus of his Ditchley Foundation address was on what’s next for the U.S.-U.K. relationship, and particularly focused on technology and the future—something Mandelson said he is challenging both countries to even more deeply collaborate on in the coming months and years ahead.

“Our economies and societies—how we live, what we achieve, how we live our lives, how long we’re going to live our lives—are all going to be transformed by new, critical technologies,” Mandelson said. “Now, how we discover, how we innovate on the basis of the technologies that we’re developing, how we apply them, how we harness the force of science to transform and enhance our lives, is a really, really exciting opportunity for us. I think that given that the United States and the U.K. have trillion dollar technology ecosystems in both our countries, given that our technology companies like to invest in each other and co-exist in other countries, given that in some cases they want to merge in order to increase their firepower, we should encourage that. Secondly, where we need a greater flow of ideas and talent between our countries, I think we should encourage that. Thirdly, let’s identify some big projects that if we were to combine and do those together, we’d have a better chance of pulling them off in the future. We need to do that not just for our own sakes and our own livelihoods and our own future economic growth, but also, as I say, because we are in a race, we are in a competition with China, and it’s better that we stay ahead rather than have China dominate this century in those important critical technologies—which were they to do so, would have a profound effect on our livelihoods and our safety.”