The UK and Japan have set out a new bilateral framework on economic security, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae signing a joint declaration in London on 14 June 2026. According to the text published by GOV.UK, the declaration is intended to sit alongside the 2023 Hiroshima Accord and a separate Frontier Technology Partnership on critical and emerging technologies. In practical terms, the document moves the relationship beyond broad diplomatic language and towards a more structured programme of work. It brings trade policy, investment screening, supply chain planning, technology protection and research security into one policy setting, with both governments presenting economic resilience as part of national security.
The declaration does not announce a single new law or tariff. Instead, it organises existing ministerial and official channels around a shared economic security agenda. The two governments say this will be carried through forums including the Economic 2+2, the Strategic Economic Policy and Trade Dialogue, the Financial Dialogue, the Energy and Climate Dialogue, the Ministerial Digital Council and the Joint Committee Meeting on Science and Technology Co-operation, as well as through the Industrial Strategy Partnership and the Economic Security Partnership. That institutional detail matters. For officials and regulated sectors, it suggests that UK-Japan co-operation will be handled through recurring policy machinery rather than ad hoc summit statements. It also indicates that economic security will now cut across departments responsible for trade, finance, energy, digital policy, science and industry.
On trade and investment, the declaration commits both sides to make the investment environment more predictable and transparent while remaining consistent with market principles and private-sector ownership. The text also points to closer contact between strategic finance agencies and deeper information-sharing on investment screening policies and practice. Business engagement is treated as part of the policy model rather than an afterthought. The declaration refers to the November 2025 statement by Keidanren and the CBI and says ministers will seek industry input, encourage changes in corporate behaviour where supply chain or technology risks are identified, and expand links between policy research institutions. The clearest sectoral project is offshore wind, where the two sides say they will launch an Offshore Wind Industrial Compact covering finance, research and development, and supply chain co-operation.
Supply chain resilience occupies a large share of the text. London and Tokyo say transparent, diversified and reliable access to strategic goods is central to economic security, and they link that directly to energy markets and emergency planning. The declaration explicitly refers to disruption risks arising from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the pressure this can place on energy supply chains. The two governments therefore commit to closer co-ordination on emergency response, national oil reserve systems and work with international bodies such as the International Energy Agency. The declaration also refers to the Global Clean Power Alliance and Partnership on Wide Energy and Resources Resilience Asia. It stresses the need to restore free navigation for critical commodities and notes that disruption can fall especially heavily on vulnerable countries. That wording places maritime disruption, shipping routes and energy logistics inside the economic security brief, rather than treating them as separate foreign policy concerns.
A firmer part of the declaration addresses economic coercion and arbitrary export restrictions, with a specific warning about the effect of such measures on critical minerals. The UK and Japan say export controls, where used, should be narrowly defined, non-discriminatory and consistent with international law and practice. They also commit to share information and consult each other when coercive actions arise. On critical minerals, the text builds on the 2023 Japan-UK Memorandum of Co-operation and sets out a work programme across mining, refining, processing, recycling and stockpiling, including with G7 members and other like-minded partners. Officials have been tasked with a more focused dialogue on projects of mutual interest, including battery materials and recycling, and on co-operation in third countries. The declaration also links midstream and downstream industrial competitiveness to stronger protection for critical technologies and says both sides will co-ordinate policy measures on technology control.
The declaration pairs innovation policy with tighter protection of sensitive technology. Both governments say resilience and productivity depend on maintaining strengths in critical and emerging technologies, including through the Frontier Technology Partnership, but they also state that research security and research integrity must be handled more systematically. The aim, as set out in the text, is to manage risk in international research collaboration while keeping research open, secure and trusted. This has consequences well beyond government laboratories. Universities, research institutes, venture capital firms and start-ups are all drawn into the agenda. The declaration calls for more two-way investment, more support for joint commercialisation in emerging and dual-use technology, and joint work to understand risks to innovation and commercialisation. That points to closer scrutiny of partnerships, funding routes, data access and technology transfer arrangements.
Defence industry co-operation is also explicitly included. The text states that collaboration in critical and emerging technologies, including within defence manufacturing, is important to collective resilience and economic security. It says the two governments will deepen industrial and supply chain links, support technology transfer and share expertise, with the Global Combat Air Programme identified as a vehicle for doing so. That is a notable point for companies in aerospace, advanced materials, electronics and specialist manufacturing. It suggests that defence supply chains are being treated as part of a wider economic security agenda, where industrial policy, export control practice and allied capability planning are increasingly connected.
At the multilateral level, the declaration reaffirms support for the World Trade Organization and calls for reform so that the system is fit for present economic security challenges. It also records shared concern about non-market policies and practices that can create harmful overcapacity, distort markets and deepen strategic dependencies. Alongside the WTO, the two governments say they want the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership to keep expanding and to be updated in areas including supply chain resilience, economic coercion and market-distorting practices, while remaining consistent with the Auckland Principles, the UK-Japan CEPA and WTO rules. The closing section broadens the agenda to engagement with Global South countries, including in the Indo-Pacific, through assistance, legal and policy exchange, and co-ordinated outreach on economic security. Taken together, the declaration is best read as a policy operating plan rather than a one-off communiqué. It does not create immediate statutory change on its own, but it signals more joined-up UK-Japan work on investment screening, critical minerals, research protection, trade rules and industrial resilience over the period ahead.