INTERVIEW: Honda president says Japan can no longer be a manufacturing base

Honda Motor Co. President Takanobu Ito says the high yen makes it impossible for Japan to remain a major manufacturing center for automobiles.

Ito offered his thoughts during an interview with The Asahi Shimbun. Excerpts follow:

* * *

Question: Can Honda continue to export automobiles, given the growing negative effects from foreign exchange losses brought about by a stronger yen?

Ito: At current foreign exchange levels, that is out of the question. The situation is such that our executive in charge of the U.S. market said, "Sending automobiles from Japan will only add to our losses." (Honda) has a long history of setting up plants overseas as part of a move toward a system that promotes local production and local sales. However, the body blows we have taken as a result of the current stronger yen have made it clear that Japan can no longer be a global center in terms of a manufacturing and exporting base.

Read the full article here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kyle Bass On Rehypothecation And Other Keynesian Endgame Scenarios

If readers have the sense there has been a deluge of Kyle Bass reading (and viewing) materials on Zero Hedge in the past two weeks, it is because there has been: and why not - after all, unlike all other cheap talking heads, and know-nothing pundits who merely need a suit to make an appearance on one of the TV's financial comedy channels, Kyle has been consistent in the most important thing - telling the truth. Today, he took his resurgent popularity to CNBC which always knows which way the winds blow, and told David Faber more or less everything that Zero Hedge readers know already about Europe's collapse, on why the ECB will print but only after a default, and about the inevitable global debt restructuring. There was a twist: as most regulars here know, the key topic of the past week, of December, and potentially of 2011, is the limitless "fractional Prime Broker lending" of assets-cum-liabilities (and when it comes to the realization that one's gold itself m
Read more

Jim Sinclair - CB’s Trying to Keep Gold from Rising Violently

Today legendary trader and investor Jim Sinclair told King World News that central banks are trying to keep the price of gold from rising violently. Sinclair also believes we are entering a period where currencies will lose their ability to function as money and instead will act more like casino chips, while gold ascends. Here is what Sinclair had to say about the ongoing financial crisis: “What needs to be understood by our listeners, Eric, is when a haircut takes place, what you give with one hand, you take with another. Now the problem becomes the problem of a bank’s asset having been reduced and the bank’s ability to function reduced and the bank’s abilities to positively pass tests of liquidity have been reduced. And the psychology of the stability of a system has been reduced.” Jim Sinclair continues: “When that takes place there has to be something on the other side called liquidity, which is injected into the banks to overcome the haircut reduction. Not only that, but
Read more