The CEO of the company which owns Carrier, which agreed to keep hundreds of manufacturing jobs in Indiana after a direct plea from President-elect Donald Trump, has admitted the deal was influenced by the fear of losing federal government work.

Last month the company, which makes heaters and air conditioners, announced it was backtracking on its plans to move production from Indianapolis to Mexico after Mr Trump intervened.

Greg Hayes, CEO of United Technologies, told CNBC yesterday: 'I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. I also know that about 10 per cent of our revenue comes from the US government.'

President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, are introduced to Carrier worker Mauro Rosales (right) by the company's CEO Greg Hayes (left)

Trump's presidential transition team saw the Carrier U-turn as an early PR coup for the incoming administration, although the terms of the agreement remain murky.

By enabling Carrier's Indianapolis plant to stay open, the deal spares about 800 workers whose jobs were going to be outsourced to Mexico, according to federal officials.

This suggests that hundreds will still lose their jobs at the factory, where roughly 1,400 workers were slated to be laid off.

Greg Hayes (pictured, left, and right, with Mike Pence) denied Mr Trump had offered him a quid pro quo if he reversed the decision to move all the jobs to Mexico

Mr Hayes said he was partly influenced by the belief that the Trump administration would bring in lower taxes and a better regulatory environment.

Speaking of his conversations with Mr Trump, he told CNBC there was no deal as such, and added: 'There was no quid pro quo for him to say, "Look, I am not going to tax you, if you don't do this." He simply said, "Take a look at this."'

United Technologies owns Pratt & Whitney, a big supplier of fighter jet engines, and it gets about $5.6billion a year in federal money.

Don't get that tie caught in the machinery: Mr Trump went on a walkabout at the factory last week. Its closure would have been a major embarrassment for Mike Pence, who is the Governor of Indiana

After the announcement that Carrier were staying in Indianapolis, Senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, said he still had questions about what the announcement would mean for the workers.

He said: 'Who is going to be retained? What is the structure there will be for the retention? What is going to be put in place?

'Are these the same jobs at the same wage? I would sure like to know as soon as I can.'

If the Indianapolis plant had closed it would have been a major embarrassment for Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is the outgoing Governor of Indiana.

On the campaign trail, Trump threatened to impose sharp tariffs on any company that shifted its factories to Mexico. And his advisers have since promoted lower corporate tax rates as a means of keeping jobs in the US.

In February, United Technologies said it would close its Carrier air conditioning and heating plant in Indianapolis and move its manufacturing to Mexico. The plant's workers would have been laid off over three years starting in 2017.

Whatever deal Trump struck with Carrier does not appear to have salvaged jobs at a separate branch of United Technologies in Huntington, Indiana, that makes microprocessor-based controls for the heating, air conditioning and refrigeration industries.

That branch will move manufacturing operations to a new plant in Mexico, costing the city 700 jobs by 2018.