WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The widening gap in performance in the United States between Japanese and U.S. automakers is unlikely to cause the kind of trade friction seen in the 1980s and 1990s, a Toyota Motor North America Inc. executive said in a recent interview.
Josephine Cooper, group vice president in charge of government and industry affairs, cited Japanese automakers' contributions to the U.S. economy, including investment in new plants and creation of jobs, contrasting it with U.S. automakers' increasing outsourcing abroad.
"So for all these reasons, I think that it would be a stretch of my imagination to think that the trade friction we experienced in the early '90s would happen again today," Cooper said.