Wow, that's a stretch. I think some replacement parts need to be imported, but new manufacture? I doubt that Nissan is making parts in Japan and then assembling them into new cars in Tennessee. Those parts all come onto the line in perfect order for the exact vehicle in an exact location on the line... that's done via shipping, so stretching the shipping half way across the world would make that process totally insane.
What i remember reading after the tsunami was that it put a six month kink into new car production in Japan, and as I recall, that was giving us a boost in the overseas market (like China, where GM is doing great guns)... not that it affected the American market. Toyota sales have dropped for the past five years, here, they are just losing market with the same models and a big drop off in quality.
