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.

"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.

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.

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)

Here's an idea that says otherwise.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1097550055400181760.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_UK_Manufacturing

The heavy lifting of Honda is in the UK for the EU region.

“About 40 percent of the components that Honda uses at the Swindon factory come from the European Union”

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.