How Can This Be Glibly Dismissed As Project Fear - It's Happening Now Thanks To Brexit.

[Canary42]

Seems like we've lost a very valuable trading partner.

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/japanese-aren-t-daft-why-080019995.html

To me it makes chilly reading.

For example
[In the 1980s this is where consensus was reached that Margaret Thatcher’s commitment to the European single market and customs union, along with her labour market reforms, offered a major opportunity for Japanese business. It would allow Britain to be the place where Japan could develop its famed “just-in-time” delivery system by sourcing production across Europe, without tariffs, regulatory and customs checks, and foster the recruitment and management of talent Europe-wide. They took her at her word, and the investment boom that has transformed the British car industry was born.

Today, a new Japanese consensus has formed. The Conservative party and its leaders cannot be trusted. They ignore warnings, break their word and do not understand business – personified by Old Etonians Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Brexit is a first-order disaster, striking at the heart of how Japanese companies organise themselves as "lean manufacturers. "]

[agchristie]

//British Conservative ministers are regarded by many Japanese as alien creatures locked in a 19th-century time warp.//

That is quite funny!

[Cloverjo]

This is disastrous. Honda going, now Nissan. A huge amount of jobs lost, and not just those jobs; the livelihoods of businesses around them will be in trouble.

Jesus, what is the PM doing?

[New Judge]

The Japanese should not have relied upon the UK remaining part of the EU's Ponzi scheme. The UK has had no significant car industry for decades. It has simply been a location where foreign manufacturers construct their products for sale elsewhere.

The idea of Brexit is that the UK moves away from hosting such enterprises (which provide little to no benefit overall for the country). The chances are that Japanese corporations would have made these moves regardless of Brexit. The recent EU:Japan trade deal means the Japanese can make their cars in Japan and ship them to the EU tariff-free. They only had their manufacturing facilities in the UK for expediency. They would have moved anyway once they could provide employment in Japan to the benefit of Japanese workers. As usual, an attempt to blame Brexit for something which would have happened anyway.

[TonyV]

ag Not that funny when companies are now diverting new investment away from UK. Honda have already announced closure of Swindon factory. As I have posted previously apart from actual factory employees, think figure is a ratio of 5 : 1 for people that jobs rely on the factories presence, from part and service suppliers down to other local jobs in shops etc.

[Calicogirl]

What a load of blustering stuff and nonsense NJ- your chickens are coming home to roost is what's happening, and it's people in the UK who are losing their livelihoods because of the fiasco of Brexit.

[Atheist]

NJ.
'As usual, an attempt to blame Brexit for something which would have happened anyway.'

But strangely a lot of these things are happening now. Coincidence?

[ToraToraTora]

Nowt to do with brexit, Japan has done a free trade deal with the EUSSR, It makes sense for them to create jobs in their own country. The EUSSR could of course do the same deal with us but hey ho it seems they want us under the jackboot in return.

[ichkeria]

I read this earlier: the bit about the Swindon North MP is particularly shameful.
I wonder what traditional Thatcherites make of this, given what Hutton (no Thatcherite of course) has to say about her legacy in contrast to the “Etonian” Johnson et al. I said before that the Tories have always been an uneasy alliance of patriotic protectionists and liberal free traders: currently the Brexit wing are largely patriotic free traders: or so they think: they are about to find out the hard way that it’s the EU actually which offers the better trading options. Tho it’s debatable whether any of them care.
As for the others, they’ll still be burbling “project fear” as they slowly sink

[agchristie]

TonyV - I agree.I was of course referring to the Japanese comments.

[Atheist]

TTT, any chance you could drop the silly EUSSR business and talk like a grown up?

[ichkeria]

“Enterprises which provide little or no benefit to the country”

Oh come on NJ you cannot be serious.

[New Judge]

They are not coincidental to Brexit. They are coincidental to the EU:Japan trade deal. Wherever the Japanese plants were located in the EU, they would almost certainly be relocated back to Japan upon completion of the deal. There is no longer any need for the Japanese to construct their cars in Europe. They can construct them in Japan (providing employment for Japanese workers) and ship them to Europe. Prior to this deal, if the cars were constructed in Japan they would be subject to tariffs upon shipping to the EU. Now they won't be.

[Cloverjo]

Erm, yes, NJ. Lots of jobs lost. And further jobs lost.

[New Judge]

Indeed. And they would have been lost with or without Brexit. You need to look at why the Japanese are shifting their operations and not simply assume it is because of Brexit. There is no longer any need for them to manufacture their products in Europe.

[tonyav]

If it's to do with brexit I wonder why Honda / Nissan aren't relocating to Germany, France or some other EU country, especially with Nissan being in partnership with Renault.

[Calicogirl]

The Tory Brexiteers invented the notion of 'project fear' in the hope that those of us who could see what was happening and what was going to happen, would feel so foolish yelling alarm that we wouldn't, it gave them the opportunity to spoon feed it to people like NJ who believed it and who apparently does think all this economic misery is a huge bloody coincidence and that we nasty lefties are telling lies designed to scare the peasants into revolting. You honestly couldn't make it up :/

[tonyav]

I haven't heard anything about Toyota moving their Derbyshire factory production to Japan.

[New Judge]

"I haven't heard anything about Toyota moving their Derbyshire factory production to Japan."

Yet.

"...it gave them the opportunity to spoon feed it to people like NJ who believed it and who apparently does think all this economic misery is a huge bloody coincidence"

Nobody spoon feeds me anything. As you may glean from my posts, I make my own enquiries and form my own conclusions. That includes this issue. Perhaps you'd like to consider the point tonyav made at 22:18.

[ichkeria]

I don’t really buy the idea that Japan would move all its production back to Japan because of that deal. The only reason would be as you say to provide jobs for Japanese workers, a noble enough move in itself from a purely Japanese point of view, but it’s not really how the Japanese do their business deals. What that EU deal does is indeed benefit Japan’s home based car industry, but it also benefits many EU exporters who will see tariffs on their exports to Japan also abolished. The Japanese do tend to do things for the long haul and in tariff terms nothing would have changed. What is more likely as Will Hutton points out is that they are seriously irritated and offended by the lack of clarity from Britain as to its future relationship with the EU - and of course Japan

[cassa333]

Because car plant closures have nothing really to do with Brexit and everything to do with the EU/Japan trade deal.

It is patently cheaper for them to close the plants in the UK, relocate toJapan and e port to the EU than keeping production in EU countries. Not just the UK by the way.

So the upshot is that the trade deal the EU has with Japan actually hurts EU manufacturing.