Most Japanese imports really arent

Most Japanese imports really arent

The conventional practice in the auto industry is to call them imports, but nearly seven in 10 of the Japanese-badged cars, trucks and crossovers sold in the U.S. last year were produced on a North American assembly line.

More than a quarter century after Honda began building cars at its factory in Marysville, OH, over 400,000 jobs in the U.S. have been created by the Japanese automakers with operations here, according to a new report by the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA).

With the yen stronger than ever, that trend is likely to continue. For example, Toyota recently announced plans to begin producing several product lines, including the Sienna minivan, in the U.S. for export to Korea. The JAMA report reveals that Japanese exports from their U.S. plants have been rising rapidly. They jumped to 145,000 in 2010 from just 95,000 the year before.

The shift to a North American production base reflects a variety of factors:

The strong yen, as mentioned, has made it extremely difficult to turn a profit on products exported from Japan. At the same time, the weak U.S. dollar has sharply reduced the effective cost of producing vehicles here for export;

Japanese makers have become increasingly aware of political concerns over the U.S. trade deficit and want to avoid a return of voluntary quotas they faced two decades ago;

The quality of American-made cars now rivals that of the best Japanese-made vehicles, and as a result, U.S. buyers no longer care where a Toyota, Nissan or Honda – or a Volkswagen or BMW, for that matter – are assembled.

The JAMA report notes that Japanese automakers had 29 plants operating in the U.S. in 2010 for a collective investment of $34 billion. These U.S. factories directly employ about 50,000 workers here and as many as 500,000 who work at the dealerships that retail the products and the supplier companies that service the factories.