Toyota and Honda cut North American production due to supply chain difficulties

On March 17, Toyota and Honda announced new production cuts in North America because supply chain problems had a serious impact on the auto industry.

Toyota said it would cut production at four plants in Kentucky, West Virginia and Mexico this week, noting that "petrochemical shortages" and "recent bad weather conditions" had affected production.

A Toyota spokesman said the cut "will affect the production of Camry, Camry hybrid, Asian Dragon, Asian Dragon hybrid, Rongfang hybrid, Lexus ES 350, Lexus ES 300h and Tacoma models", but declined to say how long the cut would last or how much production would be lost.

Honda said on the evening of March 16 that supply chain problems would force most of its car plants in the US and Canada to stop production from next Monday, which would last for a week. The reasons for the shutdown included "the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, port congestion, a shortage of microchips and bad weather over the past few weeks," the company said.

On March 17th Honda Mexico said it would suspend production at all its plants in Mexico from March 18 because of supply chain problems. Honda said in a statement that it was not clear how long the shutdown would last and called the Mexican shutdown a coordinated shutdown in North America.