Toyota global production bounces back in August (AP)

TOKYO – Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday its global production rose for the first time in a year in August as Japanese automakers continued to recover from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Worldwide output at Japan's biggest automaker climbed 10.6 percent from a year earlier to 626,817 vehicles. Production rose at both domestic and overseas factories, especially in South Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Its exports of passenger cars climbed 15 percent, but domestic sales fell more than 25 percent.

The automaker is preparing to ramp up production in the coming months to make up for losses caused by the March earthquake and tsunami, which wiped out auto parts suppliers. Between October and March 2012, it plans to build an extra 350,000 vehicles.

Rival Nissan Motor Co. also reported robust figures for August. Its global production jumped almost 24 percent to 385,112 vehicles — its best-ever August performance. The figure was offset in part by a 2.5 decline in Japan.

Sales in Japan fell 19 percent, while exports surged 34 percent.

Nissan said its global gains are being powered by strong demand for models like the Altima sedan, Versa hatchback and Rogue crossover SUV.

Meanwhile, Honda Motor Co. posted its seventh straight month of lower production, lagging behind its main rivals and underscoring the impact of a strong yen and global economic uncertainty. Worldwide output fell 9.3 percent to 261,524 vehicles.

Honda's sales in Japan slid more than 47 percent, and exports tumbled almost 38 percent.

Among Japan's other car makers, Suzuki Motor Corp. posted an 11.5 percent decline in global production to 206,049 vehicles.

Worldwide output at Mazda Motor Corp. fell 3 percent to 94,052 vehicles. At Mitsubishi Motors Corp., it declined about 8.3 percent to 82,351 vehicles.

View the original article here

McDonald's August sales miss; Japan drags (Reuters)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) reported a lower-than-expected rise in global August sales at established restaurants on Friday on a steep drop in Japan and a lull in new product launches in the United States.

The world's largest hamburger chain, whose shares fell more than 4 percent, said sales at restaurants open at least 13 months rose 3.5 percent worldwide. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were looking for an increase of 4.3 percent.

Same-restaurant sales rose 3.9 percent in the United States, while analysts had expected a 4.0 percent gain. In Europe -- McDonald's largest market -- the company reported an increase of 2.7 percent, missing analysts' expectations of a 4.7 percent increase.

To help increase sales, McDonald's has relied on new products like breakfast oatmeal and a beverage overhaul that has included the introduction of fruit smoothies and other drinks.

In August 2010, demand for smoothies helped drive up U.S. same-restaurant sales by 4.6 percent.

This year "new product launches were really weighted toward the front half of the summer," Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy said.

But he noted the company was still doing better than its competitors in terms of same-restaurant sales.

"It's still comping positive while a lot of their competitors are still squarely in negative territory," Hottovy said.

McDonald's sales and profits for months have been the envy of the global fast-food industry, which means that the company is punished when results meet or miss expectations.

The company has been outpacing rivals like Wendy's Co (WEN.N), Burger King Corp (BKCBK.UL) and Yum Brands Inc's (YUM.N) KFC by attracting a broader range of diners than fast-food's typical young adult males.

McDonald's reported a 0.3 percent decline in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa, while Wall Street had forecast a rise of 3.5 percent.

Asia was dragged down by a sharp decline in comparable sales in Japan, where consumers are still adjusting to the aftermath of the March earthquake and tsunami.

Earlier this week, Red Lobster and Olive Garden parent Darden Restaurants Inc (DRI.N) warned that Hurricane Irene had dented its quarterly earnings by 2 cents per share.

But Irene had only minimal impact on McDonald's sales, a company spokeswoman said.

Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's shares were down 4.2 percent at $84.90 in early New York Stock Exchange trading.

(Additional reporting Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

View the original article here

Remembering the towering walls of August

MOSCOW — History's milestones are rarely so neatly arrayed as they are this summer. Fifty years ago this month, the Berlin Wall was born. After some hesitation, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union's leader, allowed his East German counterpart, Walter Ulbricht, to erect a barrier between East and West Berlin in order to ensure the survival of communism in the entire Soviet bloc.

By that point, East Germany had hemorrhaged 3 million people — including many of its most talented — as hundreds each day walked into the zones of Berlin controlled by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

And 20 years ago this month, hardliners in the Soviet government attempted to overthrow President Mikhail Gorbachev, who, two years after U.S. President Ronald Reagan memorably called on him to "tear down this wall," had done just that. Somewhat miraculously, a reformer who wanted Russians to be part of the democratic West had come to power in the Kremlin.

Gorbachev's hardline Politburo adversaries, like those who had hemmed in Khrushchev at the time of the Berlin Wall's construction, were determined to preserve the decrepit system that the wall symbolized. But, in August 1991, ordinary Muscovites stood their ground. They defied the coup makers, and in the end carried with them much of the Russian Army. With their defiance, the coup was doomed.

Berliners never stood a similar chance in the face of Soviet power. Khrushchev had assented to Ulbricht's plea that only a physical barrier would maintain the viability of the East German state. Khrushchev's response was reminiscent of how he dealt with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a time when he was just consolidating his rule and needed to keep Kremlin hardliners at bay.

But five years after the brutal suppression of the demands for freedom heard in Budapest, Khrushchev was not fully convinced of the need to divide Berlin. He feared that his policy of improved relations with Western Europe would be destroyed in the process, and that U.S. President John F. Kennedy would view the wall as the first provocative step in a confrontation that could lead to nuclear war.

Khrushchev had placed enormous hope in the Soviet Union's ability to build more positive relations with Europe, particularly after the U-2 spy plane incident in 1960 (when the American pilot Gary Francis Powers was shot down over Soviet territory) had poisoned relations with the U.S. While his summit with Kennedy in Vienna earlier in 1961 had done nothing to improve the situation, erecting the wall on Aug. 13 seemed to him a purely defensive act, not a show of force.

Khrushchev was considering his own political fortunes as well. Ever since his 1956 Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's cult of personality, his position within the Politburo had weakened; his support among the Kremlin leadership was shallow, and hardliners sniped at him from every direction. In the end, the decision to build the wall was a desperate bid both to secure the continuation of communist rule in East Germany and to appease his detractors.

Brinkmanship of the sort that took place as the wall went up is usually the product of a politician desperate to shore up his domestic position. The irony for Khrushchev was that, though the hardliners wanted the wall, they later included his indecisiveness about the wall on the charge sheet used to force his removal in 1964. His decision preserved Soviet rule in East Germany for decades, but contributed to his own political demise.

When Gorbachev allowed the wall to be breached and then demolished, he alienated the bulk of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union even more than Khrushchev had. Indeed, Gorbachev once told me how Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's dictator, called him to request that tanks be sent into Berlin to preserve the wall.

But Gorbachev, though still a believer in communism, refused to maintain the Soviet empire at the barrel of a gun. His was a brinkmanship very different from Khrushchev's: He was daring the West to recognize and accept that the Soviet Union had truly changed.

In a conversation with then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, Gorbachev took issue with the American side constantly referring to the "Western values of freedom," insisting that "these are human values."

By the time the West came to believe that Gorbachev and his reforms were genuine, resentment among his Kremlin colleagues was boiling over. The coup leaders of August 1991 viewed Gorbachev's ouster the same way Ulbricht had regarded his demand for the wall — as the only means to preserve communist rule.

When the West tried to warn Gorbachev that a coup was coming, it was already too late. But ordinary Russians' sudden, unexpected defense of their newfound freedoms, together with the putschists' sheer incompetence, defeated the effort to restore totalitarian rule.

Had the wall not been built in 1961, would communism have collapsed sooner? Had Gorbachev responded to Ceausescu's plea and sent troops to defend the wall, would communism in Europe ever have collapsed?

These are unanswerable questions. And, given that Gorbachev refused to use force anywhere to preserve the Soviet's East European empire, the idea that he would do so to preserve the wall seems preposterous. What does seem clear is that, in the end, no wall can hold back democracy — and, conversely, that if a country's people don't want democracy enough, no Berlin Wall is needed to keep it out. The world has Russian leader Vladimir Putin to thank for that lesson.

Nina Khrushcheva, author of "Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics," teaches international affairs at The New School, and is senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. © 2011 Project Syndicate

View the original article here