Rufus Yerxa, the leader of the National Foreign Trade Council, will be retiring in September, he told us. Yerxa, who will be 70 at the time of his exit, does plan to continue consulting or do other part-time work. He said he expects the NFTC board to have selected a replacement by its July meeting.

Bloomberg News is reporting that Sarah Bianchi, a senior managing director at Evercore ISI International, is being considered for deputy U.S. trade representative, according to anonymous sources. Bianchi, who once served as director of policy for Vice President Joe Biden, is still being vetted, the sources said. The story did not say which deputy job Bianchi would be put in, but a commissioner for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission tweeted that she would be in charge of China.

Lam Research Corp. added a semiconductor industry official and a former Bureau of Industry and Security official to its government affairs team, according to Rich Ashooh, the company's vice president of global government affairs. Lam hired Chantal Lakatos de Alcantara, BIS’s former director of nonproliferation policy, who will serve as its senior director for regulatory affairs, Ashooh said in an April 5 LinkedIn post. The company also hired Taylor Sholler, a former government affairs director with Applied Materials, who will serve as Lam’s senior director for legislative affairs. Ashooh left his senior role at BIS last year (see 2007210016).