How's that for a headline?
Honda's Chief Executive Takeo Fukui is hinting (threatening?) that Honda might move their corporate headquarters out of Japan, as a protest to the Japanese government's strengthening of the yen.
"If the government is saying, 'We don't care about the export industry', then that's fine -- we'll act accordingly," Chief Executive Takeo Fukui told a small group of reporters in an interview on Friday.
"If we go beyond (100 yen), we would simply have to transfer more production overseas, cut more temporary workers and even start laying off permanent jobs," he said.
"Beyond that we could switch to importing more cars into Japan, bring research and development facilities overseas, and in an extreme scenario move our headquarters offshore. It would cause nothing short of a hollowing out of Japanese industry."
This time last year, would anyone have predicted what's transpired over these last 12 months in the financial or auto industry? Amazing. Simply amazing.
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Empty threat to get their way?
Artificially devaluing your currency is not a smart thing to do...
And everyone bitches at our manufacturers when they complain that they don't have a level playing field..
"Artificially devaluing your currency is not a smart thing to do..."
Kind of like what we're doing in this country?
Strong words. There would be a huge grassroots uprising if Honda ever left Japan. I doubt citizens would stand for it.
Honda has always defied the Japanese gov. Ever since the wee early days, Honda and the national gov have been at odds with each other.
The question is, where would they go? Australia? The US? Canada?
i don't think it's an idle threat - Honda already pulled out of F1. Honda is trying to blackmail the Japanese gov.. if I were the gov, I would say screw them.. and hopefully Honda will relocate to the US. :)
flicmod,
We just started, it leveled the playing field, and now they're whining.
Well, he's right that it's more difficult to export when you have a strong currency. OTOH, when you have consistently huge trade surpluses for decades, then your currency will strengthen vs. your trading partners. That's the way it works. And it makes sense for Honda to move overseas because their domestic share is smaller than their major rivals and smaller than their worldwide market share.