Toyota Expects to Be World's No. 1 Automaker Next Year

Toyota said yesterday that it was on track to become the world's largest automaker next year, dethroning General Motors and underlining how far auto manufacturing has fallen from its once-pivotal place in America's economy and politics.

The Japanese automaker's potential dominance will sharpen the spotlight on the industry's problems when Congress reconvenes in January. Members from Michigan, led by Rep. John D. Dingell, have pledged to use Democratic control of Congress to help U.S. automakers.

"If Toyota's worldwide production surpasses General Motors', it will simply provide further evidence of the need for the U.S. government to pursue policies that maintain and strengthen the U.S. industrial base," Dingell said yesterday.

Instead of coming to Detroit's defense, other Democrats, including Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, said Congress will be more inclined to push U.S. automakers in a new direction. Given how far the companies have fallen, members of Congress are likely to target issues of environmental awareness and fuel economy, areas where the Japanese automakers lead.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she wasn't surprised by Toyota's growth. "I have long said that fuel-efficient automobiles in America would be the ticket to larger and larger market share," she said.

Evidence of the U.S. decline in auto manufacturing has mounted as foreign automakers press further into the U.S. market. Toyota has the top-selling car in the United States, the Camry, and the best-selling hybrid, the Prius. Just last month it opened a plant in San Antonio to build its Tundra pickup truck, targeting the last segment of the market dominated by U.S. manufacturers.

"Toyota just seems to be this behemoth that keeps moving along," said Gary N. Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Meanwhile, the U.S. auto industry is staggering though a dark period. Plant closings have been announced from Atlanta to Oklahoma City, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

The decline of the U.S. automakers has also been seen in other ways. In the 1950s and 1960s, presidents turned to the leaders of GM and Ford to be their defense secretaries (Eisenhower to GM's Charles E. Wilson and Kennedy and Johnson to Ford's Robert S. McNamara). General Motors was synonymous with modernity, bigness and efficiency.

"It used to be that LBJ or Nixon would fly to Detroit and give a talk to the Detroit Economic Club and that would set economic policy for a year," said Nelson N. Lichtenstein, director of the Center for Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "Contrast that to nowadays, when the presidents of the Big Three wanted an audience with Bush and it took them about a year to get it."

The clout of Japanese automakers has steadily grown in Washington as their factories have sprung up in the South. U.S. auto companies and the United Auto Workers union are still able to get some of what they want. So far, they have been able to stave off mandates from Congress, such as substantially more stringent fuel-economy standards.

For U.S. workers, the prospect of a smaller Big Three and a bigger Toyota means continuing pressure on high-wage jobs with health and retirement benefits, according to Lichtenstein and Chaison. GM, Ford and Chrysler are unionized, but the United Auto Workers has been unable to organize workers at Toyota, Honda and other so-called transplants, which operate mostly in Southern states where there is little union tradition.