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Honda Plans to Leave Britain as Brexit Draws Close

kozikow 8y ago
https://outline.com/advb7U https://outline.com/advb7U
Illniyar 8y ago
"All European market production is being consolidated to Japan, where the company is based" Doesn't seem to be related to brexit.
- threeseed 8y ago
  Sort of. Primarily it's because of the EU-JP FTA. But even if they didn't happen they would've had to leave since both UK parties want to leave the single market. And without the single market it's very difficult to run a frictionless supply chain across the channel. It's why you are seeing lots of manufacturing companies preparing to leave UK.
- mey 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_UK_Manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_UK_Manufacturing The heavy lifting of Honda is in the UK for the EU region.
- glenndebacker 8y ago
  There is only one Honda plant in the EU. Also because of the new trade deal between the EU and Japan it’s possible cheaper for them to export from Japan than a UK because of the brexit (regardless if there is a deal)
  - dingaling 8y ago
    > There is only one Honda plant in the EU That's not correct; there is an auto parts factory in Belgium and a light-machinery plant in France ( my lawnmower and generator hail from there ). They are also planning to close the Civic production factory in non-EU Turkey which produced the saloon to import to the EU, to complement Swindon's hatchback.
- jsiepkes 8y ago
  "Like Nissan, Honda stands to benefit from a new trade deal between the European Union and Japan, which will make it easier to produce cars in Japan for export to the bloc. " Due to Brexit they no longer have access to the EU internal market from the UK. Add to that a new trade deal between the EU and Japan and there is little reason for them to stay in the UK.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  How is this comment possibly downvoted? The facts of the article poignantly contradict the headline, which is quite common as the Brexit narrative is distorted daily in all directions. Japan is withdrawing from Europe, point blank, this really isn't so much a Brexit issue, certainly not warranted in the title.
  - luka-birsa 8y ago
    You are trying to tell me that its an unlucky coincidence that the businesses are shutting down right around Brexit deadline, and Brexit nothing has to do with it? Sure.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      "All European market production is being consolidated to Japan, where the company is based" Japan just signed a major trade deal with the EU which would abnegate them from the need to actually make any cars in Europe anymore, since they can be imported into Europe sans tariffs. Ergo - this is a story about how an EU/Japan trade deal is causing the closure of plants across Europe. Clearly Brexit might be part of the calculus but there's no evidence to suggest how they are related. You've offered no evidence or logic, and neither has the article. I don't think there's any clear reasoning on how Brexit factors into this.
      - mojuba 8y ago
        > Ergo - this is a story about how an EU/Japan trade deal is causing the closure of plants across Europe. Any examples of closures elsewhere in the EU?
        Wildgoose 8y ago
        Taken from a comment further up: "They are also planning to close the Civic production factory in non-EU Turkey which produced the saloon to import to the EU, to complement Swindon's hatchback."
- jumelles 8y ago
  Here's an idea that says otherwise. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1097550055400181760.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1097550055400181760.html
- pcurve 8y ago
  “About 40 percent of the components that Honda uses at the Swindon factory come from the European Union”
- daddylonglegs 8y ago
  Honda will be able to fall back to production in Japan thanks to a trade deal with the EU that has just come into force. That trade deal was agreed in 2017 after the UK had formally started it's withdrawal, so the UK was no longer able to make sure the deal suited UK industry. There is no guarantee that the UK would have done so of course, we have no idea what we're doing and we are no longer fooling anyone. Car sales are down globally but, while the downturns are when large companies make their cuts, the decision to pull out of a country completely will be driven by long term considerations. I think the Japanese establishment have lost confidence in the UK and, having prepared their lifeboat in 2017, they are now abandoning ship. Two years of lunacy have brought things to the point that parts and vehicles in transit between Japan and the UK are in a legal limbo: if you ship something now you don't know what customs and regulatory arrangements will be in place in six weeks time when your goods are unloaded! The 29th of March will not bring a moment of clarity. Whether it's an exit under the withdrawal agreement or a crash-out, the exit will not establish the replacement trade agreements. We still need to negotiate them all [1]. What we've done so far was the easy part and we clearly were not ready even for that. [1] Well, not all of them. At least we've wrapped up an agreement with the Faroe Islands.
0xADEADBEE 8y ago
It's worth noting that a lot of major car manufacturers have raised concerns about this: - Nissan cited Brexit as a reason for not building one of its latest models in England - Jaguar/Land Rover is cutting jobs citing 'geopolitical reasons' - Toyota has warned against Brexit All taken from: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47225787 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47225787 As an expat, I'm fascinated to see how Brexit will play out.
- argd678 8y ago
  It’s interesting how every company that suddenly leaves the UK as the deadline approaches says it’s due to some other reason and factors. Even if it were true, it does bring up that when you destabilize an economy by adding uncertainty it puts you at more risk when weathering the other normal economic bumps. So what breaks the camel’s back may not be Brexit, but you’ve added a lot of burden to make a straw a bigger concern now.
  - pcurve 8y ago
    To them brexit is a colossal cardboard box sitting on camel. They have no idea what’s even in it let alone compute how much it weighs.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > It’s interesting how every company that suddenly leaves the UK as the deadline approaches says it’s due to some other reason and factors. Nobody wants to get in a fight with the Brexit press.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Here's an interesting question about uncertainty. Can you measure it? What units is uncertainty measured in? If there are any, is there a curve that maps uncertainty to changes in GDP and if so on which historical events was this curve calibrated? If you ask these questions you rapidly find yourself into a bottomless spiral of, ironically, uncertainty, as the economics profession can't give a straight answer to any of them. In fact some economists think uncertainty based recessions don't exist at all. The UK appears to be a strong counterexample. It was supposed to experience a recession that wiped out half a million jobs due to the plunge in investment that would be triggered by the uncertainty of voting Leave. In fact the economy grew, wages went up, employment went up, immigration levels have hardly changed overall, and the UK is now the best performing EU country in the G7. Moreover despite there being tremendous uncertainty about whether there'll be a deal of any sort of all, there still doesn't seem to be any measurable impact. That's why the Remain contingent keeps pointing at individual cases - there is no observable Brexit effect in the actual economic statistics themselves. And for every case of a company leaving and blaming Brexit, debatable thought these cases are, there seem to be other cases of companies doing the opposite, like Citigroup who donated to the Remain campaign yet nonetheless appears about to spend £1.2 Billion buying its London HQ: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/citigroup-hands-britain-1-2bn-vote-of-confidence-s8pd8vslj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/citigroup-hands-... So you said this: it does bring up that when you destabilize an economy by adding uncertainty it puts you at more risk But where is the evidence of this destabilisation? As far as I can tell, if you somehow didn't know about the vote or the negotiations, you'd conclude the opposite - German growth has hit zero, Italy is in recession, the Spanish government just collapsed, and there are massive riots every weekend in France. Where's the instability in the UK? It looks pretty peaceful in comparison.
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
I remember working in telecommunications in "high-cost" sites. Even when there wasn't a portfolio consolidation due to some merger, people were constantly living with the fear of heaving their jobs moved to "lower-cost" countries. When I read such news, I automatically wonder how much of this is because the company wanted the option to move some other place anyway and now Brexit gives them that excuse. I'm not saying that's always the case (especially with smaller companies or what is referred to as the "Mittelstand" in Germany). But in a climate where an employer can simply open a new site in a more forward looking region/climate (and be welcomed with state funding promises by that country), it would make sense. EDIT: this guy on twitter has been tracking the companies that plan to downsize or leave UK due to brexit: https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1066972171518558208 https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/10669721715185582... for the automotive specifically: https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1053948208798416896 https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/10539482087984168...
- pjc50 8y ago
  Moving back to Japan is hardly the low cost option.
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    it's not about returning to low cost but about global competition. The UK has outdone itself to proof they can't be trusted with providing a stable climate in which to plan ahead. also we don't know what kind of concessions the city of Tokio, Osaka or Nagoya have made as a promises to the company if they return and create X number of jobs there. As others mentioned it might be because of the recent EU-JP trade deal but usually the reason is that the region has promised to give tax breaks or other incentives ...
  - simonh 8y ago
    They already have factories and extensive supply chains in Japan, so it’s not necessarily all that expensive, especially if the Swindon plant needs re-tooling for new models. Typically such decisions coincide with plant and tooling refresh cycles. Remainer though I be, looking at it objectively I suspect this has more to do with the recent EU trade deal with a Japan. Cars made in Europe were exempt from import duties, but now that import duties on cars from Japan are going away that incentive is going away with it. But then making cars in the UK may become liable to EU import duties after brexit, and we wouldn’t benefit from reduced duties selling our native cars into Japan either, so there are a lot of increased risks over here. Brexit hasn’t happened, so it’s hard to draw a straight line between any one event like this and Brexit. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor and we do know investment in the UK has collapsed over the last few years, particularly in manufacturing.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
luka-birsa 8y ago
I'm literarly hanging on the edge of the seat in this self inflicted catastrophe that is Brexit. I view it as an experiment in what happens when common sense fails to win in an election. I'm a EU citizen and Brexit will have negative impact, but I really want them to see this through, preferably in a no deal fashion. I want to see what happens. Was it realy project Fear, or - what I belive - this will spell total shit for UK for comming years and decades.
- TomK32 8y ago
  Two elections, May gambled on the needless General Election and then had to go to bed with the radicals from the DUP. As interesting as the "lesson" of a no-deal would be (and it would be shit because France or Ireland can't just keep the border wide open as it is without getting sued by the EU, the majority of the UK voters are coming to realize that it is a stupid idea and has to be prevented. What has to change is this toxic english press that wrote so many lies about the EU for decades.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  I think a no-deal is very likely at this point. It will be interesting to see how much everything was hyped by media and what are the real lessons for other countries ... Could it really be that a complex set of contracts is so poorly implemented that the exit conditions will push a state over the brink ?? If yes then I wonder how nobody thought about risk and contingency - after all contracts can always be reviewed, re-negotiated and revised. Preferably every couple of years. If EU membership is a one way road that can only be untangled with economic hardship (or even civil war) then other countries should start thinking for their own contingency. Even they don't intend to leave it's just good practice ... Similar like Russia planning to shut off their connection to the rest of the Internet. If you don't plan for such scenarios and practice resilience and recovery it'll eventually end in tears (whatever system/s you build).
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > the exit conditions will push a state over the brink ? It doesn't have to be a disaster; the separation of Czechoslovakia was comparatively easier! It is a disaster of choice due to lack of coherent planning. The government position makes no sense - why are we trying to leave the customs union too? The EU membership brought benefits. It should not be surprising that leaving it is disadvantageous. Russia leaving the Internet would cost them a lot more if they had a tech industry and weren't a non free petrostate.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
—-
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  How is Amazon’s pulling out of NY related to Brexit?
jzl 8y ago
Good update on Brexit yesterday from Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBQfSAVt0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBQfSAVt0s This answered a lot of questions that I (an American) was wondering about the current state of things. The most telling moment is when a man who imports flowers says that his entire business will probably be ruined by Brexit, but then goes on to say that he voted to leave. When pressed further about whether he considered his business when he voted, he says "I didn't really think about it."
- i_feel_great 8y ago
  You Americans might laugh at this, but then you voted Trump. Us Aussies have our own shitty politicians, so we are not laughing.
  - jzl 8y ago
    Are you familiar with the show? No American viewer of Last Week Tonight is so lacking in self-awareness that they would condescendingly "laugh" at Brexit as if their own country was doing fine. There's nothing contradictory about thinking Brexit and Trump are both fiascos. The point of the segment (and the show in general) is to inform, not to laugh. Also, no American host would ever really do a segment like this. John Oliver is British so he has a unique sort of soapbox being the host of a show whose audience is primarily in the US. That cross-cultural dynamic is one of the things that makes the show unique.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  "I didn't really think about it." Seems to sum up politics for 25% or more of the electorate across plenty of the globe right now. Summed up another way might be "they're all a bunch of useless, corrupt bastards". Sigh, I'd have to switch my VPN endpoint to watch that clip.
holri 8y ago
Meanwhile Austria's chancellor Kurz is visiting Honda [1]... (Austria has a strong automotive industry) [1] https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/-/bundeskanzler-kurz-suedkorea-und-japan-bieten-viele-chancen-fur-oesterreich https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/-/bundeskanzler-kurz-sued...
RickJWagner 8y ago
Per the BBC, this has nothing to do with Brexit: "Honda said the move was due to global changes in the car industry and the need to launch electric vehicles, and it had nothing to do with Brexit." https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47287386 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47287386

https://outline.com/advb7U https://outline.com/advb7U

"All European market production is being consolidated to Japan, where the company is based" Doesn't seem to be related to brexit.

threeseed 8y ago
Sort of. Primarily it's because of the EU-JP FTA. But even if they didn't happen they would've had to leave since both UK parties want to leave the single market. And without the single market it's very difficult to run a frictionless supply chain across the channel. It's why you are seeing lots of manufacturing companies preparing to leave UK.
mey 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_UK_Manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_UK_Manufacturing The heavy lifting of Honda is in the UK for the EU region.
glenndebacker 8y ago
There is only one Honda plant in the EU. Also because of the new trade deal between the EU and Japan it’s possible cheaper for them to export from Japan than a UK because of the brexit (regardless if there is a deal)
- dingaling 8y ago
  > There is only one Honda plant in the EU That's not correct; there is an auto parts factory in Belgium and a light-machinery plant in France ( my lawnmower and generator hail from there ). They are also planning to close the Civic production factory in non-EU Turkey which produced the saloon to import to the EU, to complement Swindon's hatchback.
jsiepkes 8y ago
"Like Nissan, Honda stands to benefit from a new trade deal between the European Union and Japan, which will make it easier to produce cars in Japan for export to the bloc. " Due to Brexit they no longer have access to the EU internal market from the UK. Add to that a new trade deal between the EU and Japan and there is little reason for them to stay in the UK.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
How is this comment possibly downvoted? The facts of the article poignantly contradict the headline, which is quite common as the Brexit narrative is distorted daily in all directions. Japan is withdrawing from Europe, point blank, this really isn't so much a Brexit issue, certainly not warranted in the title.
- luka-birsa 8y ago
  You are trying to tell me that its an unlucky coincidence that the businesses are shutting down right around Brexit deadline, and Brexit nothing has to do with it? Sure.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    "All European market production is being consolidated to Japan, where the company is based" Japan just signed a major trade deal with the EU which would abnegate them from the need to actually make any cars in Europe anymore, since they can be imported into Europe sans tariffs. Ergo - this is a story about how an EU/Japan trade deal is causing the closure of plants across Europe. Clearly Brexit might be part of the calculus but there's no evidence to suggest how they are related. You've offered no evidence or logic, and neither has the article. I don't think there's any clear reasoning on how Brexit factors into this.
    - mojuba 8y ago
      > Ergo - this is a story about how an EU/Japan trade deal is causing the closure of plants across Europe. Any examples of closures elsewhere in the EU?
      - Wildgoose 8y ago
        Taken from a comment further up: "They are also planning to close the Civic production factory in non-EU Turkey which produced the saloon to import to the EU, to complement Swindon's hatchback."
jumelles 8y ago
Here's an idea that says otherwise. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1097550055400181760.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1097550055400181760.html
pcurve 8y ago
“About 40 percent of the components that Honda uses at the Swindon factory come from the European Union”
daddylonglegs 8y ago
Honda will be able to fall back to production in Japan thanks to a trade deal with the EU that has just come into force. That trade deal was agreed in 2017 after the UK had formally started it's withdrawal, so the UK was no longer able to make sure the deal suited UK industry. There is no guarantee that the UK would have done so of course, we have no idea what we're doing and we are no longer fooling anyone. Car sales are down globally but, while the downturns are when large companies make their cuts, the decision to pull out of a country completely will be driven by long term considerations. I think the Japanese establishment have lost confidence in the UK and, having prepared their lifeboat in 2017, they are now abandoning ship. Two years of lunacy have brought things to the point that parts and vehicles in transit between Japan and the UK are in a legal limbo: if you ship something now you don't know what customs and regulatory arrangements will be in place in six weeks time when your goods are unloaded! The 29th of March will not bring a moment of clarity. Whether it's an exit under the withdrawal agreement or a crash-out, the exit will not establish the replacement trade agreements. We still need to negotiate them all [1]. What we've done so far was the easy part and we clearly were not ready even for that. [1] Well, not all of them. At least we've wrapped up an agreement with the Faroe Islands.

0xADEADBEE 8y ago

It's worth noting that a lot of major car manufacturers have raised concerns about this: - Nissan cited Brexit as a reason for not building one of its latest models in England - Jaguar/Land Rover is cutting jobs citing 'geopolitical reasons' - Toyota has warned against Brexit All taken from: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47225787 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47225787 As an expat, I'm fascinated to see how Brexit will play out.

argd678 8y ago
It’s interesting how every company that suddenly leaves the UK as the deadline approaches says it’s due to some other reason and factors. Even if it were true, it does bring up that when you destabilize an economy by adding uncertainty it puts you at more risk when weathering the other normal economic bumps. So what breaks the camel’s back may not be Brexit, but you’ve added a lot of burden to make a straw a bigger concern now.
- pcurve 8y ago
  To them brexit is a colossal cardboard box sitting on camel. They have no idea what’s even in it let alone compute how much it weighs.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > It’s interesting how every company that suddenly leaves the UK as the deadline approaches says it’s due to some other reason and factors. Nobody wants to get in a fight with the Brexit press.
- repolfx 8y ago
  Here's an interesting question about uncertainty. Can you measure it? What units is uncertainty measured in? If there are any, is there a curve that maps uncertainty to changes in GDP and if so on which historical events was this curve calibrated? If you ask these questions you rapidly find yourself into a bottomless spiral of, ironically, uncertainty, as the economics profession can't give a straight answer to any of them. In fact some economists think uncertainty based recessions don't exist at all. The UK appears to be a strong counterexample. It was supposed to experience a recession that wiped out half a million jobs due to the plunge in investment that would be triggered by the uncertainty of voting Leave. In fact the economy grew, wages went up, employment went up, immigration levels have hardly changed overall, and the UK is now the best performing EU country in the G7. Moreover despite there being tremendous uncertainty about whether there'll be a deal of any sort of all, there still doesn't seem to be any measurable impact. That's why the Remain contingent keeps pointing at individual cases - there is no observable Brexit effect in the actual economic statistics themselves. And for every case of a company leaving and blaming Brexit, debatable thought these cases are, there seem to be other cases of companies doing the opposite, like Citigroup who donated to the Remain campaign yet nonetheless appears about to spend £1.2 Billion buying its London HQ: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/citigroup-hands-britain-1-2bn-vote-of-confidence-s8pd8vslj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/citigroup-hands-... So you said this: it does bring up that when you destabilize an economy by adding uncertainty it puts you at more risk But where is the evidence of this destabilisation? As far as I can tell, if you somehow didn't know about the vote or the negotiations, you'd conclude the opposite - German growth has hit zero, Italy is in recession, the Spanish government just collapsed, and there are massive riots every weekend in France. Where's the instability in the UK? It looks pretty peaceful in comparison.

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

I remember working in telecommunications in "high-cost" sites. Even when there wasn't a portfolio consolidation due to some merger, people were constantly living with the fear of heaving their jobs moved to "lower-cost" countries. When I read such news, I automatically wonder how much of this is because the company wanted the option to move some other place anyway and now Brexit gives them that excuse. I'm not saying that's always the case (especially with smaller companies or what is referred to as the "Mittelstand" in Germany). But in a climate where an employer can simply open a new site in a more forward looking region/climate (and be welcomed with state funding promises by that country), it would make sense. EDIT: this guy on twitter has been tracking the companies that plan to downsize or leave UK due to brexit: https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1066972171518558208 https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/10669721715185582... for the automotive specifically: https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1053948208798416896 https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/10539482087984168...

pjc50 8y ago
Moving back to Japan is hardly the low cost option.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  it's not about returning to low cost but about global competition. The UK has outdone itself to proof they can't be trusted with providing a stable climate in which to plan ahead. also we don't know what kind of concessions the city of Tokio, Osaka or Nagoya have made as a promises to the company if they return and create X number of jobs there. As others mentioned it might be because of the recent EU-JP trade deal but usually the reason is that the region has promised to give tax breaks or other incentives ...
- simonh 8y ago
  They already have factories and extensive supply chains in Japan, so it’s not necessarily all that expensive, especially if the Swindon plant needs re-tooling for new models. Typically such decisions coincide with plant and tooling refresh cycles. Remainer though I be, looking at it objectively I suspect this has more to do with the recent EU trade deal with a Japan. Cars made in Europe were exempt from import duties, but now that import duties on cars from Japan are going away that incentive is going away with it. But then making cars in the UK may become liable to EU import duties after brexit, and we wouldn’t benefit from reduced duties selling our native cars into Japan either, so there are a lot of increased risks over here. Brexit hasn’t happened, so it’s hard to draw a straight line between any one event like this and Brexit. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a factor and we do know investment in the UK has collapsed over the last few years, particularly in manufacturing.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

luka-birsa 8y ago

I'm literarly hanging on the edge of the seat in this self inflicted catastrophe that is Brexit. I view it as an experiment in what happens when common sense fails to win in an election. I'm a EU citizen and Brexit will have negative impact, but I really want them to see this through, preferably in a no deal fashion. I want to see what happens. Was it realy project Fear, or - what I belive - this will spell total shit for UK for comming years and decades.

TomK32 8y ago
Two elections, May gambled on the needless General Election and then had to go to bed with the radicals from the DUP. As interesting as the "lesson" of a no-deal would be (and it would be shit because France or Ireland can't just keep the border wide open as it is without getting sued by the EU, the majority of the UK voters are coming to realize that it is a stupid idea and has to be prevented. What has to change is this toxic english press that wrote so many lies about the EU for decades.
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
I think a no-deal is very likely at this point. It will be interesting to see how much everything was hyped by media and what are the real lessons for other countries ... Could it really be that a complex set of contracts is so poorly implemented that the exit conditions will push a state over the brink ?? If yes then I wonder how nobody thought about risk and contingency - after all contracts can always be reviewed, re-negotiated and revised. Preferably every couple of years. If EU membership is a one way road that can only be untangled with economic hardship (or even civil war) then other countries should start thinking for their own contingency. Even they don't intend to leave it's just good practice ... Similar like Russia planning to shut off their connection to the rest of the Internet. If you don't plan for such scenarios and practice resilience and recovery it'll eventually end in tears (whatever system/s you build).
- pjc50 8y ago
  > the exit conditions will push a state over the brink ? It doesn't have to be a disaster; the separation of Czechoslovakia was comparatively easier! It is a disaster of choice due to lack of coherent planning. The government position makes no sense - why are we trying to leave the customs union too? The EU membership brought benefits. It should not be surprising that leaving it is disadvantageous. Russia leaving the Internet would cost them a lot more if they had a tech industry and weren't a non free petrostate.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

—-

enraged_camel 8y ago
How is Amazon’s pulling out of NY related to Brexit?

jzl 8y ago

Good update on Brexit yesterday from Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBQfSAVt0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBQfSAVt0s This answered a lot of questions that I (an American) was wondering about the current state of things. The most telling moment is when a man who imports flowers says that his entire business will probably be ruined by Brexit, but then goes on to say that he voted to leave. When pressed further about whether he considered his business when he voted, he says "I didn't really think about it."

i_feel_great 8y ago
You Americans might laugh at this, but then you voted Trump. Us Aussies have our own shitty politicians, so we are not laughing.
- jzl 8y ago
  Are you familiar with the show? No American viewer of Last Week Tonight is so lacking in self-awareness that they would condescendingly "laugh" at Brexit as if their own country was doing fine. There's nothing contradictory about thinking Brexit and Trump are both fiascos. The point of the segment (and the show in general) is to inform, not to laugh. Also, no American host would ever really do a segment like this. John Oliver is British so he has a unique sort of soapbox being the host of a show whose audience is primarily in the US. That cross-cultural dynamic is one of the things that makes the show unique.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
"I didn't really think about it." Seems to sum up politics for 25% or more of the electorate across plenty of the globe right now. Summed up another way might be "they're all a bunch of useless, corrupt bastards". Sigh, I'd have to switch my VPN endpoint to watch that clip.

holri 8y ago

Meanwhile Austria's chancellor Kurz is visiting Honda [1]... (Austria has a strong automotive industry) [1] https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/-/bundeskanzler-kurz-suedkorea-und-japan-bieten-viele-chancen-fur-oesterreich https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/-/bundeskanzler-kurz-sued...

RickJWagner 8y ago

Per the BBC, this has nothing to do with Brexit: "Honda said the move was due to global changes in the car industry and the need to launch electric vehicles, and it had nothing to do with Brexit." https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47287386 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47287386