US-based Tesla fans are never short of excuses for smugness, but they were handed a peach this week with the latest edition of the Cars.com American-Made index.The study, which ranks vehicles’ American-ness on criteria such as assembly location, component origins and manufacturing workforce, placed all four Tesla models in the top 20, with the Model Y and Model 3 in the top two slots. Drowned by the whooping of Teslaholics, though, was Honda’s altogether cheekier colonisation (once you include the Acura brand) of an unbeatable seven of the top 20 places.
For close followers of Honda’s long-term offshoring strategy — and those of other large Japanese manufacturers — this came as little surprise. But it provides a timely reminder, perhaps, of why the current historic cheapness of the yen — now bobbing around a 24-year low — is not producing the effects that many investors might have come to expect.
Historically, there was a good reason why traders in Tokyo nicknamed the dollar-yen exchange rate “the paymaster”: the profitability and competitiveness of large parts of corporate Japan once had a high sensitivity to its level, and the performance of equity markets had a high correlation with its swings.