UPDATE #2 This rumor is downgraded to 'false,' Toyota Motor Corp. said on Tuesday it would not raise its car prices to help U.S. rivals, breaking with its chairman's comments a day earlier that voluntary price increases and other steps were in order to help restore health to the U.S. auto industry. "Our basic stance is that prices are something for the market to determine," a spokesman at Japan's top automaker said. "We are not thinking about changing (vehicle) prices in order to help the U.S. auto industry." Japanese brands collectively grabbed a record 30 percent share of the U.S. auto market last year, and some executives have become more sensitive about how their companies' success would play out at the political level At the Detroit auto show last January, Toyota President Fujio Cho and Honda Motor Co. Chief Executive Takeo Fukui said Japanese brands' expansion in the United States should not go unchecked, with Fukui volunteering that the combined share should be kept under 40 percent. "I'm worried not only about GM but about the entire U.S. auto industry," Toyota Chairman Hiroshi Okuda told a news conference on Monday as the head of Japan's biggest business lobby, the Japan Business Federation. "Automobiles are the symbol of American industry, and if things go wrong there may be some kind of impact.
Reuters 04/27/05 Honda Motor Co., which earns almost two-thirds of its annual operating profits from the United States, said it won't raise vehicle prices in the world's largest vehicle market because it doesn't want to deter customers. "There is no way Honda will increase prices and ignore our customers" in the United States, Honda's executive vice president Koichi Amemiya said at a news conference Tuesday in Tokyo. "Price increases should be decided depending on market conditions."
Amemiya's comment contradicts those made Monday by Hiroshi Okuda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corp., and the Japan Business Federation. Okuda, head of Japan's largest business association, was reported by the Asahi newspaper as saying that Japanese carmakers might raise prices in the United States to give General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group "some breathing space." "I'm concerned about the current situation GM is in," Okuda said, in comments verified Monday by the federation's spokeswoman Hisako Komai. Okuda could not be reached Tuesday to comment. "There are no discussions among Japanese carmakers on this" plan to raise prices, Honda's Amemiya said Tuesday. Detroit Free Press
04/26/05 Toyota Motor Corp.'s chairman suggested Monday the Japanese carmaker may consider raising the prices of the cars it sells in the United States to help support its ailing U.S. peers, Kyodo News reported. At a news conference, Toyota Chairman Hiroshi Okuda suggested the possibility of price increases in the United States after General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. reported weak earnings results last week, Kyodo reported. Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun reported Okuda told reporters that the U.S. automakers' problems could cause a backlash for Toyota and other foreign carmakers. "Although a trade conflict, like ones that happened in the past, may be avoided, there may be some impact because the car industry is symbolic in the U.S. economy," Okuda said.
