Dyson says lack of Brexit trade deal would 'hurt the Europeans more than the British'
By Iain Gilbert
Date: Thursday 14 Sep 2017
(ShareCast News) - James Dyson, the man behind the Dyson vacuum cleaner, said he did not expect the UK to strike a Brexit deal with the European Union.
Dyson, who was a very vocal member of the Leave campaign in 2016, said he saw no issues with the UK defaulting to World Trade Organisation (WTO) legislation when Britain exited the bloc in March 2019 as any forced conditions would "frankly hurt the Europeans more than the British."
The engineer said the company already paid WTO tariffs into Europe and told the BBC on Thursday that it, "hasn't hurt us at all - we're one of the fastest growing companies in Europe."
According to Dyson, Brexit negotiations had been moving at somewhat of a glacial pace as Downing Street's suggestions were not being "reciprocated" by Brussels.
The next round of Brexit negotiations, set to start on 18 September, were pushed back until 25 September at the request of Prime Minister Theresa May.
In February, Dyson announced it was creating a new 517-acre facility in rural England as it looked to expand its research and development in to batteries, as well as robotics and artificial intelligence.
Dyson claims that any uncertainties that were to arise from Brexit is in fact an opportunity, "The rest of the world is growing at a far greater rate than Europe, so the opportunity is to export to the rest of the world and capitalise on that."
Rumours were flying around that the company was looking to use its new countryside campus as a base to begin working on an electric car programme after it picked up several former top employees from Tesla and Aston Martin but had not yet commented on the rumours.
"I think, you're going to have to wait and see," Dyson said in regards to his automotive agenda.
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