Good digging to find quite interesting and poor decision by the EIB to loan 80 million. Of course you did note that this was a loan and not a grant. And you did also note that 2 years previously the EIB had given a 450 million loan to Ford UK to develop a next generation of engines?
I agree that even a loan, deffo not a grant, to enable the moving of production to outside the EU is questionable. But it was not an EU grant to move production from the UK to the EU - which I thought was the point you were making.
So, try again please.
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It’s simplistic from my point of view, to compete with the “Global” (which we started) we needed to get cheaper labor so, we kept the Head Offices in Blighty and sent the manufacturing to johnny foreigner, this understandably concerned folks who were used to tramping to the local factory so, many promises were made about “more leisure time” etc, and the service industry was born, but, this sector only paid what a shrunken competitive wage structured industrial organization would have paid then, and, to top it all, when the deteriorating fiscal situation suited, the Head Offices jumped ship in the same fashion so, we were architects of our own post industrial doom. 
If yer want more detail, ask a university wallah. 
What a load of bollox!
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It’s hardly a loan when its interest free over 100 years is it.
Can you stop making things up, your gas lighting yourself.
Cadbury moved it’s factory to Poland costing 000’s more UK jobs thanks to a grant from the EU - another example.
Do you want more ?
Yes because I introduced the Kraft move to Poland - which amounted to hundreds of jobs being moved (no where near thousands). And Kraft still make confectionary at Bourneville so it doesn’t amount to wholesale factory closures in the UK.
I want further examples because you made the claim that moving manufacturing from the UK to the EU was done at scale, involving many, many factories and all done with EU grants. I had already highlighted the Kraft move and you offered a van making move to Turkey. You really need to provide further examples to justify your claim. Otherwise it risks looking like you are simply making empty & unjustified anti-EU complaints.
About 1200 Cadbury employees lost their jobs thanks to the move to Poland, thanks to the EU grants enabling it.
That’s not to mention the loss in revenue, jobs etc of local suppliers and how it affected circular economies local to the factories.
Its strange how you can’t say I’m wrong about all these moves of UK manufacturing to the EU. If anything, your agreeing with me. I haven’t seen you deny any of it yet.
Here is another - Peugeot move from the Ryton factory to Slovakia thanks to an EU grant. Another 2000 workers out of work, thanks to the EU commission (not to mention the impact on the local economy in Coventry). So far thats about 5000 jobs lost already just with my 3 examples so far (if you include the local economic fallout). Then there is the UK taxpayer who are paying for the unemployment benefits of thousands of people, who no longer have a job and more than likely had their pensions mothballed.
Yes, the demise of the old Talbot plant was a blow to Coventry. So you’ve got two. And, according to your numbers 6,000 jobs.
Its not good but its hardly a tsunami of closures is it? I’m pretty sure with minimum research we can identify hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost from UK government inaction and from UK company lack of investment.
Right from my post that noted the Kraft (please, the old Cadbury company is now no more than a brand, the closure decisions were made by the American Kraft company) actions I have been happy to agree with your point about relocation to EU actions. My point is that it was not the massive and frequent problem that you claim. My point is that the damage to UK manufacturing is self inflicted and not down to the EU.
Here is another one…
You can do the maths
Thanks for highlighting this move. I had missed this one and it is significant, is it not?
There are two significant facets to this. First is that each move you have highlighted have involved non-UK owned companies (Ford, US; Kraft, US; PSA, France; JLR, India). I think this is of note as these businesses own brands, not factories or people. This is major part of the down grading of UK manufacturing - foreign ownership (as opposed to EU interference).
The second significant aspect to the JLR move that you highlight - is the date. 2018. After Brexit. No company can afford to ignore the export pains that Brexit has brought. And back in 2018 so many wanted a no-deal Brexit which would have been an utter disaster. In that light, might JLR simply have been conducting prudent planning and risk management?
JLR was in a downward spiral before Tata got involved, and, it was only going one way.
Yes, I can see that point of view. They sold 4x4 cars very well but failed to get volume sales on the Jaguar brand. And once again the overseas purchase pretty much came without conditions.
People lost jobs and there was a huge impact to local economies. As someone who prides themselves on how intelligent they are, I’m surprised you missed these obvious points. Foreign investment is key to any countries economy, you somehow seem to be ignoring that as well.
A no deal Brexit would have been way better than the crap deal we have now. We would also have left the EU instead of being one foot in and one foot out. I never voted for the TCA or the Irish Protocol, in fact I campaigned against it, as I did for Brexit in 2016.
Agreed, Tata owned JLR also trashed our steelworks and raided the workers pensions. The UK government could have bailed it out, but under EU rules, its forbidden for the government to bail out private businesses.
Not the same thing as the EU paying to move them to other countries so that UK manufacturing declines to favour Germany, which now rules the 27.
If you think that then it is clear that you do not understand how international trade works. I know that many pugilistic ERG linked MPs went about trying to claim that the UK was prepared to leave without a deal. They thought this was some sort of threat for the EU, they thought this might just be a negotiating leverage. However no serious observer, including all of the EU, ever thought that this was going to happen. All the forecasts made it clear that leaving without a deal would be utterly disastrous for the UK.
Unfortunately, some of these MPs actually thought it was a good idea (but then, tory MPs inflicting harm and cost onto the UK is clearly a trend). And quite a lot of eager Brexit fans bought into the no deal hype. I guess the concept was something about completely leaving - ignoring the fact it would be completely harmful.
It was a bad concept and still is a bad concept. It is not going to happen. Thankfully.
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Currency fluctuations vary prices way more than a 6% tariff (the EU CET). The UK should have left with no deal and had 6% tariffs on all EU imports.
The Brexit deal we have has annexed Northern Ireland, sold out our fisheries and hamstrung our VAT rates. Its an absolute horror, handed to us by Theresa May and Ollie Robbins who were ardent remainers and did everything they could to stitch us up and leave us as a vassal state. They did a great job.
The TCA with the EU is a disaster, we would be much better off without it, just like we don’t have a trade deal with the USA, who we have far higher volumes of trade with.
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You do realise that currency movement would still happen if the UK had left with no deal. Obviously there would have been an initial export benefit of the collapse of the pound (yes, it would have happened). Except every time the pound drops significantly the exports fail to materialise. With not enough to export and seemingly woeful ability to penetrate export markets the UK just does not get significantly more exports when the pound falls.
Then you suggest a 6% tariff on EU imports - and that would be on top of the weaker poiund buying so much less. So that would kick the UK economy into inflation (even higher than we have) and recession, even deeper than we have. Plus the balance of payment would be so much worse.
You are aware that German car companies modelled the impact of a 5-6% tariff on the cars they export to us. That was a worse case scenario - and it concluded that for ‘normal’ cars (e.g. Volkswagen range) this would at worse be a 25% drop in sales or them taking a 5% hit on profit. For luxury German cars the impact was marginal. So VW would simply recover loss of sales by driving up targets in other regions (all that would need would be a 2-3% uplift in sales) and Merc/BMW did not care.
So your notion that the UK would be ‘winning’ by stepping away with a no deal is pure fantasy. Higher import costs, paltry improvement in exports if any, crashing the pound, UK debt rating plummeting, higher cost of debt repayment, higher inflation, higher interest rates and recession for years and years. And that is before things like the Ukraine war and Covid recovery are layered on top. You must really hate the UK and its people.
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I know currency movement would happen if we had left the EU without a deal, although I don’t see what that has to do with what I wrote before about currency fluctuations…
Most large companies fix exchange rates at the beginning of each fiscal year between manufacturers and their suppliers, this happens all over the world, not just with the Euro. Smaller companies where exchange rates vary also experience hits to profits/losses just like when trading all over the world - its a risk of global trade. I know of UK companies exporting all over the world (I also run one), and how varying currency exchange rates are part and parcel of the risks of trade, no trade agreement has a parity exchange rate that I know of.
I also don’t know why you seem fixated with a weak pound and a 6% tariff, the tariff is an import tax which benefits the exchequer, a currency fluctuation affects the exporter and importer. In larger trading commodities (such as oil) trading is done in the dollar, so the EU and the UK both experience fluctuations due to the dollar exchange rates etc. A well pound doesn’t mean a weak economy, it means manufacturing exports from the UK are cheaper - the beauty of Brexit is we can adjust the value of our currency to benefit the UK, unlike the Eurozone who not only don’t have a centralised treasury (like we do) they also can’t adjust their currency value without cratering another country by doing so. Unlike the EU, the UK can set its own tariff rates and isn’t bound by a centralised one that benefits other countries and not ours (like the CET when we were members). We also have single seat at the WTO, as does the EU.
A 6% tariff doesn’t cause inflation either, otherwise the CET would be causing inflation in the Eurozone from USA/Chinese/African (and so on) imports - it isn’t. Inflation is mainly caused by supply, demand and interest rates. The EU’s biggest trading partners are subject to tariffs - the USA and China, both that come under the CET.
Putting a 25% tariff on German cars would be my preference anyway so that (as one of Germanys largest consumers of BMW, Mercedes, Audi etc) it would encourage them to manufacture them over here, creating foreign investment and more jobs, economic growth. A 6% tariff is way too low, especially when most of these cars are leased anyway and have interest applied way above a 6% tariff margin.
And I don’t hate the UK at all, thats just something youre inventing again. I live here, I love my country and the people who I live with. I’m not an ex-pat living in France. I also pay tax here, run a business here and have a UK passport.
As for higher import costs, you make the assumption we would still import from the EU, far from it, we would import from other parts of the world, such as the Commonwealth where we would buy cheaper products which would remove the impact of any 6% tariff (while we use MFN rules).
Just as predicted……
What a bummer…
Definitely not a benefit .