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 afte

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.