Japan Disaster Threatens Economic Recovery, Affects Economies Globally

[Mr Lee]

I can see car prices and electronics going up to compensate for all the losses. What other things do you think we might expect?

The disaster in Japan threatens to significantly impede the nation's economic recovery, perhaps spreading to other nations, say economists.

Key elements of Japan's manufacturing have frozen. Toyota, Honda and Nissan automobile plants in northern Japan have been closed. Nissan has said that nearly 2,300 Nissan and Infiniti vehicles awaiting shipment were destroyed by the tsunami that followed the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, according to a report from IHS Automotive.Toyota has halted 45 percent of its global production, and plans to keep all its Japanese plants shuttered through Wednesday, according to the report. Nissan has reported damage to six of its Japanese facilities. Honda plans to keep several of its plants closed through March 20.With shipping ports and roads destroyed, some companies are simply unable to export products. The automotive industry, which economists have hailed as a source of global economic growth, now faces a strain."Even if they could make the cars, they couldn't send them anywhere," Feldman said from Tokyo. "In a certain sense, Japan is very tough -- construction standards really saved a lot of people -- but we do have this distribution issue."

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