Quello che va male per Toyota, va male per il Giappone

(dal Wall Street Journal)


By JAMES SIMMS
As goes Toyota Motor, so goes Japan.
In recent economic downturns, Japan's been able to lean on its auto industry to offset declines elsewhere. But a decade of success by the car makers -- particularly Toyota's challenge of General Motors' position as the world's biggest producer -- means that they've become Japan's largest export sector just in time for a protracted slump in global auto sales.

While auto makers now account for only 0.8% of U.S. gross domestic product, they make up 3.2% of Japan's GDP, according to J.P. Morgan.
And the country's reliance on indebted, car-loving Americans, in particular, has actually increased in recent years. The export value of cars and auto parts has doubled in less than a decade and, in the fiscal year that ended last March, accounted for over a fifth of Japan's $940 billion in exports. The U.S. accounts for a third of sales at Toyota and half at Honda Motor.
So the cuts in planned output and layoffs that are following poor sales at home and abroad, are already hitting hard -- in particular in the Japanese regional auto hub of Tokai.
The area is home to about 12% of Japan's 128 million population, and managed to avoid the spike in unemployment elsewhere in the nation during both the Asian financial crisis and dot-com downturn -- thanks to continuing growth in auto exports.
That's surely little comfort to policy makers in the region now. Aichi prefecture, which is home to the bulk of Toyota's domestic plants is planning to start hiring staffers to do odd jobs -- like inspecting roads -- to offset employment cuts.
Detroit's sister city, Toyota City, with 400,000 residents and 76,000 jobs connected to the auto business, meanwhile, expects next fiscal year's corporate tax revenue to plunge from about $490 million to one-tenth of that. So public-works spending is being slashed.
But the auto makers are probably just getting started with their cuts. The country's main eight car makers have already cut planned output by 2.2 million units and axed over 11,000 contract workers. Toyota alone accounts for almost half of the production cuts, which it announced in early November.
The situation, of course, has worsened considerably since then.



Write to James Simms at james.simms@dowjones.com