Ford Motor Co.'s top financial executive said the weak yen hands Japanese automakers as much as $11,000 more profit per car and allowed Toyota Motor Corp., the world's largest automaker, to earn an extra $10 billion in 2013. Ford wants the U.S. to intervene against what it sees as currency manipulation.
"The concern we have is what do you do with all that money," Bob Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer, said last week in an interview. "The competitive landscape really shifts when you've got a competitor that suddenly has got that kind of windfall simply because the currency has moved."
Ford is encouraging U.S. trade officials to include rules to prevent currency manipulation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty under negotiation between North American and Asia-Pacific countries, including Japan.