How Toyota, Target, Best Buy are fighting back against Republican border tax push
WASHINGTON: Days before a group of Republican lawmakers were due to discuss their party’s controversial proposal to tax all imports, Toyota Motor Corp sent an urgent message to its US dealers – tell the politicians the tax would seriously hurt car buyers.
Some of Toyota’s 1,500 dealers heeded the call and contacted members of the House of Representatives’ tax- writing Ways and Means Committee, urging them to rethink their proposal, according to people familiar with the effort.
Imposing a 20 per cent tax on imports would force consumers to pay potentially thousands of dollars more for vehicles, they warned.
The Japanese automaker’s mobilisation of its army of dealers underscores the growing alarm among some of the world’s largest companies that sell imported goods in the United States.
They fear a big tax on imports would hurt their sales and profits and put them at a disadvantage to rivals more reliant on US-made products.
“Cost is going to go up, as a result demand is going to go down. As a result, we’re not going to able to employ as many as people as we do today. That’s my biggest fear,” Toyota’s North America CEO Jim Lentz said in an interview.
Toyota dealers employ more than 97,000 people in the United States.
While companies and industry groups frequently lobby Congress, the threat of an import tax has mobilized an unusually broad swath of firms at home and abroad.
That lobbying effort is taking place largely out of the public eye partly to avoid potential conflict with President Donald Trump, who has attacked companies for manufacturing abroad for US consumers.
Earlier this month Trump targeted Toyota, threatening to impose a hefty fee on the world’s largest automaker if it builds its Corolla cars for the US market at a plant in Mexico. — Reuters