By Kathleen Caulderwood - While 44 percent of all vehicles sold in America last year were built somewhere else, Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE:HMC) shipped more cars out of the country than it imported.
It's a landmark point for the Tokyo-based carmaker, and represents a wider trend in an industry beginning to focus on localized manufacturing to cut costs and take advantage of target markets.
Figures released on Tuesday show that the company shipped 108,705 American-made Honda and Acura vehicles from the United States last year, while importing 88, 537 from Japan.
Rich Schostek, Honda North America's executive vice president, told reporters that their new "net exporter" status was "one that's been 30 years in the making."
"In just a few decades, the expansion of free trade and growth in U.S. operations has transformed Honda from importing 100 percent of the cars sold in the U.S. to establishing the U.S. as an export and production hub," he said in a press release.
Honda is the country's fifth-largest carmaker by sales. Last year, it built 1.3 million vehicles in America, up 7.4 percent from the year before.
Nearly 7 million of all the 15.6 million vehicles sold in the U.S. last year were built somewhere else. American producers exported almost three million cars.
"Honda [has] always been the most American of the major Japanese carmakers," said James Rubenstein, an auto industry analyst and professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio to The Los Angeles Times.
"There is this globalizaion of the industry, and North America is increasingly competitive in teh global market," he added.
Honda's plany in Marysville, Ohio was the first ever to be owned by a Japanese auto company in the United States. Last year, the company shipped cars from American plants to 50 countries, with most exports going to Mexico.
Though American manufacturing job growth remains slow -- last year there were just 12 millino jobs, downf rom 14.3 in 2004 -- automakers are focusing their attenion to the region as it recovers from the financial crisis.
According to The Financial Times, 90 percent of Toyota's vehicles sold in China are also made there, and the company hopes to increase this rate even further in the future.