[TopDog2]

"Japanese car plants are mostly just assembly...The parts mostly come from Japan...As well as replacement parts..."

That is incorrect. I have a "Made in Ohio" Honda that has a higher US part content (80%)than the Ford I owned previously. I also worked (long ago) for a US steel company that produced steel body panels for Toyota, Mitsuibishi and Honda. All the shipments were to the US plants of those companies.

[Beagle8U]

The only part of the post you mentioned that I added to, was the fact that most all the tooling, machines, and engineering comes from Japan.

I was a tooling manager at an automotive supplier plant that did produce parts for Toyota and Honda, but nearly ALL of the tooling is shipped in from Japan.

The wholely Japanese owned plants buy all their machines in Japan also, they often send the skilled tradesmen from their plants here to Japan for training on repairing them.

If they have a choice, they will purchase everything from other Japanese firms.