Britain and Japan have formally signed a post-Brexit trade deal, the first major UK agreement since Brexit. This information was given in a report on the BBC online.

According to the agreement, almost all of its products will be exempted from the export duty to Japan by 2026 in exchange for the removal of British tariffs on Japanese cars.

Liz Truss, the UK’s secretary of international trade called it a “groundbreaking deal”. But critics aren’t so happy. They say the deal will only increase the UK’s GDP by 0.7 percent. That is a small part of the trade that has been lost with the EU.

The two countries reached a comprehensive agreement in September. The deal is expected to boost trade between the UK and Japan by about $1.5 billion. The agreement will be effective from January 1 next year.

Minako Morita-Jaeger an international trade policy consultant and UK trade policy observer at the University of Sussex said Japan’s foreign direct investment was playing a key role in the UK economy.

Maintaining its existing investment in the post-Brexit trade deal period is crucial. With this in mind, the UK government should include a wide range of investment chapters to protect Japanese investment.

He added that Japan is one of the countries in the world as a foreign direct investor. In 2018, Japan accounted for 14 percent of the total investment.