1/2 a billion here.....
It is amazing how companies can screw money out of governments, even when those governments are free market, non interventionist, low tax, and broke.
In a way this has always happened, it is just the scale now that is staggering. Leave aside the USA and the EU which are throwing billions at huge battery factories and chip makers. In the UK the government that hasn’t got the money to mend school buildings in danger of collapse, has in the last month or so found well over £1 billion for private businesses, with huge resources and no shortage of cash.
This has included £1/2 billion in order to keep steel making alive in the UK even if it means thousands of job losses, and £1/2 billion to produce batteries for JLR in the UK.
I really don’t think that JLR were going to build car batteries anywhere else but the UK however just the threat got them £500 million of tax payers money. Apparently even massively reduced steel production in Wales is worth another £500 million. Also BMW have just had to be paid to keep Mini production in the UK, god knows what Nissan squeezed out of a desperate government.
It just shows who has the power, this government is on the back foot, cannot afford major industrial failures and so shovels cash at companies that threaten to leave. 1/2 a billion here and 1/2 billion there and pretty soon you are talking serious money.
This government is weak in many other ways too, and companies always demand subsidies to invest because they can but a large proportion of this £1 billion is Brexit Blackmail money.
Please don’t go, we will pay you to stay.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media