The catastrophe of March’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan has deepened.

The government has had to eat its words as it attempted to down play the scale of the devastation, as radioactive material poured into the sea and evaporated into the atmosphere. Traces have even been found in the air in Britain. It has become clear that the government has been in the pocket of the nuclear industry, which was hoping for a cover-up as in previous years.

“The government has been saying atomic power is OK because we have Nisa and the Nuclear Safety Commission [the country’s regulators], but that’s a lie”, said Kunihiko Takeda, who worked in the nuclear industry for 20 years. “Tepco is bad, but it’s the system that allowed it to get that way.”
There is growing public discontent over the handling of the crisis. An opinion poll showed that almost 70% of those surveyed by the Nikkei Business Daily found the government’s response unacceptable.

Over the next few months, Toyota, Honda, General Motors and Ford will temporarily close factories in the United States and Canada. Production slow-downs are affecting plants in Turkey, Poland, France and Britain. This underscores the vulnerability of “lean production” methods introduced in the 1970s to increase profitability, but has made the system more prone to shocks. Supply chains were stretched to the limits and they are paying the price for this.

This is going to have an effect on the wider economy. According to Bosch, the world’s largest car parts supplier, the impact of the Japanese earthquake will cut global economic growth by a quarter of one percent and make a big dent in planned car production. The disruption to the automotive supply chain could result in a 40% cut to the anticipated growth in global output of light vehicles this year.

What is certain is that Japan’s economy, the second largest in the world, has been hard hit. This year will witness a fall in GDP. This will affect Japanese imports, with car sales reported to have fallen by 37%.