Japanese prime minister hints that crashing out of EU could hurt foreign investment in UK

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Shinzo Abe has told Theresa May to avoid a no-deal Brexit, hinting that investors from Japan need predictability and stability.

Speaking before a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Argentina, the Japanese prime minister said he wanted to “pay tribute” to May’s leadership in securing the deal. But, he went on, any prospect of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal risked international consequences.

“I would like to once again ask for your support to avoid no deal,” he said. “As well as to ensure transparency, predictability [and] legal stability in the Brexit process.”

Japanese investors have repeatedly said the UK could lose its standing as the country’s preferred “gateway to Europe” in the event of no deal, which could disrupt supply chains.

The president of Toyota said last month that a no-deal Brexit should be avoided at all costs.

Honda warned that a no-deal Brexit would cost it tens of millions of pounds in additional tariffs and would damage the competitiveness of its Swindon plant. And Nissan, which employs 7,000 at Britain’s biggest car factory in Sunderland, has said that a sudden change to World Trade Organization rules would have “serious implications for British industry”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nissan’s car factory in Sunderland – the biggest in Britain, employing 7,000 people.



Photograph: Handout/PA

Car manufacturers are particularly exposed to any disruption to trade because of their “just-in-time” supply chains constantly moving parts around Europe.

May did not directly engage with Abe’s warning, saying her negotiated deal was “a good deal for businesses in the UK, including the many Japanese companies who have made significant investment into the UK and who will be able to continue on the basis of our deal to trade well with the European Union”.

Abe was not the first world leader to raise the prospect of uncertainty over May’s Brexit deal. In an earlier bilateral meeting, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, acknowledged May had a difficult situation to navigate.

He politely described May as dealing in “typical British fashion” with “a very tough set of issues”.

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“I think you’ve shown great resilience and great determination on one of the most vexed issues I think there is,” he went on, a diplomatic reference to her domestic struggles.

Downing Street said the bilateral discussions were on trade and security, including “work to lay the foundations for an ambitious future UK/Australia free trade agreement”.

No 10 has said trade is the focus of all but one of May’s seven meetings with G20 leaders at the summit – the exception being the meeting on Friday with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, where the topics were the war in Yemen and the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.