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- <text id=93TT1113>
- <title>
- Mar. 08, 1993: Japan's Economic Red Tide
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Mar. 08, 1993 The Search for the Tower Bomber
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 19
- BUSINESS
- Japan's Economic Red Tide Rises
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Carmakers suffer financial woes only worsened by a strong yen
- </p>
-
- <p> News of an automobile assembly plant's closing is supposed to
- come from Detroit, not Japan. But there was the No. 2 Japanese
- carmaker, Nissan, announcing that it was shutting down its plant
- in Zama, outside Tokyo, and reassigning 4,000 workers. In expectation
- of a $246 million loss for the fiscal year, Nissan plans to
- reduce its 53,000-member work force by 5,000. The car company's
- troubling news is only the latest downtick in Japan's deepening
- recession. The country's aggregate corporate earnings are down
- for an unprecedented third year, promising plenty of blue-chip
- company for Nissan. In other bad news, telecommunications giant
- NTT announced that it would cut 30,000 employees over three
- years. And Matsushita president Akio Tanii resigned, accepting
- responsibility for a sharp drop in profits, owing in part to
- costs associated with 700,000 defective refrigerators. Making
- matters worse is the sudden rise of the yen to a record high
- against the dollar. Monetary appreciation will hurt Japan's
- big exporters first, bringing in fewer yen for their sales in
- dollars abroad. Toyota, for example, calculates that for every
- yen in appreciation against the dollar, it loses $51 million
- in revenue from exports.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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