My post on UK's priority in free trade agreement with Japan - it should not be about increasing exports (particularly in sensitive areas like food/agriculture) it should be about protecting Japan's investments in UK and therefore jobs. 1/6 https://rudlinconsulting.com/uks-priority-in-trade-agreement-with-japan-is-not-increasing-exports-its-protecting-japans-investments-in-uk/

Japanese jobs in UK that UK could protect through FTA with Japan are:
Automotive
Infrastructure - Hitachi Rail etc
Regional HQs
Services used by Japanese regional HQs - ICT, legal, financial, marketing, consulting, engineering, design, training
2/6

Like Brexit, COVID-19 is going to give Japanese companies a cover for doing what they wanted to do or were doing anyway. Japanese automotive sector is going eastwards in Europe. So conceding 0 tariffs on Japanese automotive part imports may be just delaying the pain 3/6

Growth in Japanese jobs in UK has been with Hitachi, NTT = rail, ICT. So 0 tariffs on rail parts/machinery from Japan will help there. Free data flows are helpful to ICT companies + also Japanese companies with regional HQs in UK. But latter also depends on EU-UK data deal 4/6

UK's success in exporting services to Japan is I suspect to do with UK hosting so many Japanese regional HQs who purchase UK legal, financial, consulting services + bring capital inflows for M&As. Whether big UK M&As by Japanese companies will continue, I'm not sure. 5/6

Easier visas for Japanese people will also help with maintaining regional HQs in UK, so long as EU-UK come to a deal on regional HQ people being able to move around Europe to do their jobs. Yes it's all about UK giving, not Japan, but them's the breaks. We've got 6 weeks. 6/6