Honda Motor Co, suffering from a 38 percent plunge in US auto sales last month, may ask to borrow money from Japan’s government to lend to US car buyers.
The amount of the loans and timing of the request to the state-owned Japan Bank for International Cooperation have not yet been determined, spokeswoman Akemi Ando said by phone yesterday.
Mazda Motor Corp is also considering a request for government loans, spokesman Toyota Tanaka said yesterday.
Honda and Mazda would follow Toyota Motor Corp, Japan’s biggest carmaker, in seeking loans from the government as the global recession hammers auto demand. Toyota’s financial unit may ask for ¥200 billion (US$2 billion) in loans, public broadcaster NHK reported on Tuesday, without citing anyone.
“Things look pretty grim at present,” said Edwin Merner, president of Atlantis Investment Research Corp in Tokyo, which manages US$3.1 billion. “By the end of the year, the year-on-year figures should start improving unless the world economy gets much worse.”
Honda may request at least ¥10 billion from the government, the Nikkei newspaper said yesterday, without citing sources.
Mazda, the Japanese carmaker partially owned by Ford Motor Co, increasingly needs the funds, mainly in the US and Europe, Tanaka said in a phone interview.
No details have been decided regarding a request for government funding, he said.
Japan will use some of its foreign-exchange reserves to lend to the state-owned bank that gives financing to Japanese companies operating abroad, Japanese Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano said on Tuesday.
The ministry may lend about US$5 billion to the bank this month, he said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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