{"id":92631,"date":"2018-06-07T13:26:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T13:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=98ffe41f998b5919afb3c9ddcdf7616a"},"modified":"2018-06-07T13:26:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T13:26:55","slug":"speech-an-enduring-home-for-german-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=92631","title":{"rendered":"Speech: An enduring home for German investment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It\u2019s a rare treat to share a dinner with people who love Germany like me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been more than 3 decades since the first time I moved to Berlin, when I spent the best part of a year working in a variety of student roles: in Sommerbad Kreuzberg, in McDonalds and in the Kaufhaus des Westens.<\/p>\n

It was a perfect time to be in West Berlin, in the late 1980\u2019s: a chance to see a unique environment and a soon-to-become unique opportunity to visit the old Eastern Bloc, as an impressionable 19-year-old.<\/p>\n

These days, it\u2019s a long way for a 19-year-old to travel to Pyongyang, Havana or Caracas.<\/p>\n

But I digress. Returning to Germany, I\u2019ve now got a German wife and 2 half-German children, and I still speak a lot of German at home \u2013 which is lucky, as I\u2019ll be in Hamburg later this month giving a German-language speech!<\/p>\n

So I\u2019d like to thank our hosts tonight for the work they do to strengthen Anglo-German relations.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019d like to thank everyone here, as trade and business are at the heart of that relation. And that means you – you\u2019re the ones who trade; I just facilitate you trading.<\/p>\n

And you do trade a lot – \u00a350 billion worth of British exports go to Germany. More than half as much again comes the other way \u2013 in fact, Germany\u2019s trade surplus with the UK has increased by 75% in just 5 years.<\/p>\n

But I know some of you are worried about the future: that maybe, after Brexit, Britain and Germany won\u2019t be so close, and investing and trading won\u2019t be so easy.<\/p>\n

Well I\u2019d like to offer you some reassurance. I can promise you that, regardless of Brexit, the UK will remain one of the most business-friendly places on earth.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of governments who, frankly, are starting to take business and free markets for granted.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t and we won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re independently ranked seventh in the world for ease of doing business. That\u2019s something we\u2019re proud of, and it didn\u2019t happen overnight \u2013 it comes from decades of business-friendly policies.<\/p>\n

And I am certain that once we leave the European Union, British businesses will still have good access to the German market, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve already made progress \u2013 on citizens\u2019 rights, the budget, the transition period, on third-party trade agreements. And soon we\u2019ll be publishing a Brexit White Paper \u2013 that\u2019s precisely to give more clarity and therefore more certainty.<\/p>\n

Yes there are areas of difficulty like the Irish border, and yes sometimes the devil is in the detail.<\/p>\n

But I think back to when I worked in finance, in New York and London. Many business deals I traded on involved haggling on detail. And if I\u2019d have interpreted every difficulty to mean the deal would be called off I\u2019d have lost the shirt off my back.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a cool look instead, at the facts.<\/p>\n

Fact 1: a good deal is in everyone\u2019s interest. On the day we leave we\u2019ll become, overnight, the EU\u2019s second-largest export market \u2013 only slightly behind the US, but well ahead of China, Japan, or Russia.<\/p>\n

Fact 2: this will be the only trade deal in history where the 2 sides start from a position of regulatory alignment. That\u2019s a unique advantage, and in technical terms makes the agreement much more straightforward.<\/p>\n

Fact 3: we\u2019ve already reached agreement in a lot of places. Over three-quarters of the draft withdrawal text is coloured green \u2013 and much of the rest is agreed in principle.<\/p>\n

That bodes well for a future trade agreement, too. It\u2019s easy to take what\u2019s agreed for granted and focus on what isn\u2019t \u2013 easy, but misleading.<\/p>\n

Finally, Fact 4: this isn\u2019t just about mutual self-interest. The EU and the UK are and will remain close partners.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago I was at an EU Trade Ministers\u2019 Council. We are getting close to signing trade agreements with Singapore and Japan.<\/p>\n

And Britain supported that \u2013 more trade is good for everyone, and we\u2019ll continue to engage constructively while we\u2019re a member state.<\/p>\n

As the recent US tariffs have shown, those of us who do believe in the global free-trading system have a shared interest in upholding it \u2013 and that means showing leadership by approaching our own trade negotiations constructively.<\/p>\n

Right at the heart of that partnership is the bilateral relation between Britain and Germany \u2013 Europe\u2019s 2 largest economies, and 2 of its most business-friendly.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a relationship we should cherish. So I\u2019m really glad to be here tonight to celebrate it with you all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trade Minister Greg Hands speaks to businesses about post-Brexit trade at the German-British Chamber of Industry and Commerce annual dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}