Mitsuru Takahashi News

Japan Automakers Impacted by U.S. Port Dispute

Japanese automakers are being forced to ship some car parts to U.S. plants by expensive air cargo and tweak production processes as a protracted labor dispute at U.S. West Coast ports shows no signs of letting up. Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd's Subaru, the fastest-growing brand in the United States, said this week that it now had to shoulder an extra 7 billion yen ($60 million) in costs a month due to air freight, which has seen prices go up with the extra demand. "It looked like the labor talks were going well at one point but in recent days the slowdown has grown quite severe," Fuji Heavy Chief Financial Officer Mitsuru Takahashi said. He said that without the move to chartered cargo flights, the automaker's U.S. production would have come to a halt in mid-February.