Robin Harding
@RobinBHarding
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Asia Editor for the Financial Times. Former Tokyo bureau chief, Fed correspondent and leader writer. I don't tweet much these days.
Hong Kong
Joined June 2009
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A few thoughts from Japan on Honda's sad decision to close Swindon. (Honda will hold a press conference in Tokyo at 8am UK time.) There are two questions: why and why now? I think the answers are different. 1/
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It’s a tragedy really. Swindon was a huge investment, attracted with much difficulty, and started with high hopes. Once it’s gone it’ll never come back. I also wonder when we’ll hear the first UK voices calling for Trump-style protectionism. 8/8
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Japan accepted 27 refugees in 2015
The Harvard-educated CEO of ‘Japan’s Amazon’ says Trump's Muslim ban made him cry
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Why now? Brexit promises to raise costs for parts and reduce access to the EU - fatal for an already marginal plant. More importantly, it gives a company that hates to close factories or sack people a license to act. 4/
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German and French manufacturers always thought Japan would just move assembly home. With the UK outside the EU, the trade deal makes that easy. Past UK policy comes back to bite us. 6/
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The next question is Toyota in Burnaston. That is an equally subscale plant. Business logic says Toyota should close it, but like Honda, they’ll try everything to make it work. I’m afraid the mood music from Toyota these days is not encouraging. 7/
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The role of the EU-Japan trade deal is interesting. Britain pushed for the earliest possible reduction in EU auto tariffs, believing it would help Japanese assembly plants in the UK. There was some logic to this – if they had access to the EU market. 5/
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Yuriko Koike hits the streets in Ginza. Traffic flows freely. Attempts to start a chant of “Koike” get nowhere.
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Why? Frankly, Swindon *never* made an adequate return for Honda. There's too much capacity in Europe and the situation got worse and worse as Honda’s market share fell. Output at 160k last year is sub-scale. It’s an obvious business decision to close it. 2/
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However, Honda has avoided that obvious business decision for many years. Instead, they've tried everything possible to keep Swindon open, such as exporting to the US. 3/
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Some personal news. The brilliant
@JamilAnderlini
will be a tough act to follow.
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Mori Building employs a whole department to maintain this 1:1000 model of Tokyo. Eat your heart out, Trump.
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US: "Cut your auto tariffs!"
Japan: "They're zero."
US: "Well change your auto regulations!"
Japan: "We follow the UN standards."
US: "Errr"
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Putin all business; Abe all Kuril islands. Putin calls him "Mr Abe"; Abe calls him "Vladimir". This dialogue going nowhere fast.
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This from
@newscientist
in March 1972 is a pretty good response to technopessimists
http://t.co/Ohdc7HvN7b
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Sohn Hong Kong 2023 conference. First up is Eric Wong of Stillpoint Investments, pitches long LBX Pharmacy
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This kind of loose talk is frightening. There are 100m+ S Koreans & Japanese in range of a N Korean counterstrike.
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. may launch preemptive strike if North Korea reaches for nuclear trigger, intelligence officials say
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Tokyo gearing up for another zoning reform that would automatically permit 100,000+ extra apartments.
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Important that this BOJ negative rate will only apply to NEW bank reserves. That's crucial. Means it'll have little direct effect.
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Another awesome photo where Shinzo Abe celebrates women shining by giving certificates to men.
PM Abe hosted a ceremony to Commend Leading Companies Where Women Shine.
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It's great when interesting Krugman comes out. He's skeptical that inequality is bad for economic performance.
http://t.co/UP30YP5i2v
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More precisely: Japan is now taking a substantial amount of foreign students and guest workers.
Japan is now taking a substantial amount of immigration - almost as many as Canada, in terms of raw numbers.
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75% chance Toyota and Honda will leave UK if Brexit = tariffs on exports to EU
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My latest attempt to understand Japan's labour shortages/wage stagnation. Still not satisfied, though.
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Japan officially ratifies TPP on inauguration day. Tokyo still full of deluded belief that Trump will come around to it.
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Some personal news: I will be taking up a new FT job as Tokyo bureau chief next year. Going where the monetary action is hottest.
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The world's most successful, cost-effective new reactor programme. As bad for climate change as Trump pulling out of Paris.
Moon says South Korea will stop building new nuclear power plants
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This is the chart Shinzo Abe showed G7 leaders today. Based on commodity prices, it's Lehman all over again!
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Enough Piketty. Best reviews 1.
@updatedpriors
http://t.co/quLDFQssvA
2. Solow
http://t.co/fHkS7TVhmL
3.
@BrankoMilan
http://t.co/bWGv3d2D8x
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Asahi: “EU deal is Japan’s top priority,” says MOFA. Free trade talks the UK requested were not included in the joint vision statement. 3/3
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An FT op-ed where each paragraph contradicts the one before. It can only be Brexit.
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Gautam Adani is currently worth $137bn according to
@Forbes
and there’re enough news lines in this interview for five stories
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The Daily Mail homepage right now is just amazing. 100% scare stories about Brexit.
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Day before Japan’s election and the only mention is a tiny story below the fold. That’s how it’s gone as a news event.
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Japanese bitcoin trading. Be sure to have the audio on. Does it remind you of anything?
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It has each individual house. Across most of the city. It's a Bond villain's dream.
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Yes, Japan's inflation is still zero, but growth is above trend and signs of a tightening labour mkt are everywhere.
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About 40% of British wealth - £3 trillion - is an illusion caused by planning rules. Me filling in for Martin Wolf.
http://t.co/sWCTHV77oU
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Since there's no news today, we've published a special report on the Kansai region. Forget the two fat men in Singapore and read about Japanese comedy, the world's most profitable manufacturer & the wonders of sweet curry.
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Today's BoJ move is a big deal. First time a central bank has "promised to be irresponsible".
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Dear Scotland,
I'm English, so this is hard to express, but I admire you, appreciate you and would miss you terribly if you leave. Good luck
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Does Tokyo show the answer to rising urban house prices?
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BOJ cuts inflation forecasts, no policy change. They have a new font, which is about as exciting as it gets with the BOJ at the moment.
Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices (July 2017, The Bank's View)
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Free to read: labour shortages are sucking immigrants into Japan.
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Negative rates already saving Japan's govt $700m a year. But if they don't spend the cash, where's the stimulus?
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What an egregious policy error it was. We'll be suffering the consequences for many years.
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I was dubious about the widely cited 99.9 per cent figure for Japan's criminal conviction rate so we checked. It's actually 99.97 per cent.
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The G7 press centre. A thousand odd journalists and a free bar. What could possibly go wrong?
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V small number of econ books survived the office clearout but
@Neil_Irwin
made the cut and will go to Japan.
http://t.co/NNT5lBXBxt
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For 200 years, economists have argued for a land value tax. Now one American city has tried it.
http://t.co/cz4OiSK8ca
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This piece is excellent. US carmakers struggle in Japan because they're not competitive.
H/T to
@MichaelTCucek
for flagging a useful piece on the reality of Japan's automobile market:
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The leak of 260GB of data on offshore companies - this could be the biggest story of the year.
http://t.co/7VGGSDcv2w
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Will also re-up my 2016 piece on Japanese housing:
Stunning fact:
In Japan, the price of housing hasn't increased in 25 years.
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Remarkable new paper about the effects of status competition on German WW2 fighter pilots.
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Global Britain can't afford to be insular so let's look at how the Japanese media reported May's trip instead of the No. 10 spin. 1/3
Now can we revisit that FT p1 splash story earlier this week that UK's hopes would be "dashed" in Japan?
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Japan refugee numbers SOAR from 27 people in 2015 to 28 in 2016 according to latest figures.
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"Mr Bernanke had the demeanour of a man being cross-examined by his mother-in-law on matters of interior decoration."
http://t.co/lpd92umLLX
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If St Louis declined because of US antitrust policy, how come regional cities are declining all over the world?
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Japan's ministry of finance has put out this summary of the new Y28.1trn stimulus package.
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I'm late to this, but Robert Solow on Alan Greenspan's new book makes reviews by Mankiw and Summers look ridiculous.
http://t.co/cxdYJimf1O
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Charts on land and housing as a % of US and UK GDP. The land reflects the "value" of planning restrictions.
http://t.co/D5bsMOlfWP
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No momentous event in corporate life is complete without a coffee mug...
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In other words, the $2.5 trillion of existing excess reserves will keep getting +0.1% from the BOJ.
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@sam_a_bell
@michaelxpettis
@ChrisGiles_
Sorry for late reply. I agree with most of what
@michaelxpettis
says. Our point is not 'Japan shows infrastructure investment is a bad idea'. Infrastructure makes sense where marginal social benefit > marginal cost. Countries with past underinvestment have more such projects.
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Result of BOJ deceiving everyone about negative rates - nobody believes they aren't about to do helicopter money.
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V much doubt it's doable. On top of currency, Japan will want *looser* rules-of origin for cars than TPP; Trump team wants *tighter*.
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After a tumultuous week in Japanese politics, it looks like Yuriko Koike may have checkmated herself.
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Japan's earthquake warning system just cried wolf. Issued an urgent warning in Tokyo; actual quake was unnoticeable M3.9.
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This pretty much sums up the unthinking, economics-free, "structural reforms" view of Japan. h/t
@louiseflucas
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BOJ drops rates to -0.1%. Another case of Kuroda lying through his teeth to get a surprise.
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This is, err, brave: Kawasaki City is inviting the foreign press to a pub crawl. Two days, forty bars, 500 yen. It'll be absolute carnage.
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But people need to chill out. The Fed does not leak anything to any journalist to steer markets - especially during blackout.
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Tillerson affirms that Article 5 applies to the Sencuckoo islands, as he calls them.
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Early prediction for star of the Tokyo Olympics - this javelin-collecting robot
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Yomiuri: EU deal is priority. "There's a gap between the UK and Japan on the pace of a UK-Japan free trade deal," says foreign ministry. 2/3
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All we've done is report what the Japanese side is saying so this kind of stuff makes no sense to me.
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"Nowadays one often encounters the opinion that in the sixties programming has been an overpaid profession..." Ha!
http://t.co/Pyz296Wur7
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Commitment to overshoot on inflation is the 'Kuroda surprise' for this meeting. Pretty big deal. Something no other central bank has done.
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I always wonder what the babies do if you don’t cuddle them
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Weird because TPP *is* a US-Japan FTA. They make up ~80% of the covered GDP. It's why Japan joined in the first place.
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Abe says off-the-record; Krugman publishes the transcript.
What I said in Tokyo:
Aftermath (no, I don't enjoy this sort of thing):
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Finally a British govt tries to do the right thing on housing. Hope they can see off the NIMBYs. h/t
@PickardJE
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BOJ decision still not out. Their obsession with releasing stuff the instant it's decided (rather than a fixed time) is counterproductive.
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Eight years after the crisis, the Eggertsson-Woodford logic of an inflation overshoot is finally put into effect.
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Inside the fabled halls of Kunaicho. Air of a boarding school that has known better days.
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Five fascinating charts on the GDP revisions. The US economy is 3.6% bigger today - $1,783 for every American.
http://t.co/sZnnNfJgwt
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Beautifully clear paper on the world's next financial crisis (emerging market corporates) by Princeton's Hyun Shin
http://t.co/40T9IGC9w1
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It seems silly to argue about cheese but this was always going to be one of the most difficult issues in a UK/Japan trade deal. If UK doesn’t get a decent soft cheese quota then its new deal will be clearly worse than the existing EU/Japan deal. 1/2
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Shinzo Abe has visited 76 countries in the last five years. Japan has a clear diplomatic strategy and executes it vigorously.
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Good riposte to anyone who thinks we're near some fundamental limit on food production.
This is stunning: Americans devote 3x as much acreage to grow lawns as they do to any food crop.
http://t.co/YVUGMSCTlD
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"We're not going to do an FTA," says finance minister Taro Aso, now that Trump is safely out of the way.
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As well as Beijing, the FT is also looking for a correspondent in Tokyo, , and an editor in Hong Kong, . Both great jobs. Apply or drop me a line to chat informally!
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