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"There’s obviously a number of trade deals that the EU has with other countries and we are looking at the possibility of those being able to brought over certainly as initial trade deals with the United Kingdom," May told reporters Wednesday on a flight to Japan ahead of a three-day trip. "That I think will give business certainty which is what business wants at the point at which we leave." [...]
Japan is in the final stages of brokering a free-trade agreement with the world’s largest trading bloc, from which the U.K. is breaking away. That puts May in a difficult position, as her own predecessor hailed it as a landmark that would add an annual 5 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) to the U.K. economy.
The reality is that May will need all her powers of persuasion to extract commitments from the Japanese, given that her own team of negotiators in Brussels has failed to convince the EU to hurry divorce talks onto commerce.
‘Too Polite’
“I don’t see it as a simple matter, taking one text and translating it into a bilateral agreement,” Britain’s former ambassador to Japan, David Warren, told Bloomberg Radio. “I think it would be a little more complicated than that.” He said May’s hosts had grave doubts about Brexit. “The Japanese simply don’t understand why we’re doing this. They’re far too polite to say so publicly.”
[...] “My discussions with Prime Minister Abe will focus on how we can prepare the ground for an ambitious free-trade agreement after Brexit, based on the EU-Japan agreement which I very much hope is nearing conclusion,” May said in a statement Tuesday evening.
With Softbank Group’s purchase of ARM Holdings Plc and factory expansions by Nissan Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., Japan is eager for reassurances -- not just the platitudes it got from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. [...]