#ap

From the Detroit News all the way to the Miami Herald, you will receive the good news that “China’s July auto sales are up 6.7 percent.” They are not. According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), automobile production in China rose 1.26 percent in July to 1,306,100. Sales rose 2.18 percent to 1,275,300. In case you don’t read Chinese, China Daily provides a translation. The numerical crime was perpetrated again by the Associated Press. The AP is a repeat offender.

Looking at the supply chain and transit times, it was easy to predict that the big American knock-on effect of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami would start to happen around – right now. To nobody’s surprise, The Nikkei [sub] writes this Tuesday morning in Tokyo that Toyota “is highly likely to halt all manufacturing operations at its factories in North America later this month due to parts supply disruptions.” It goes on to say that “the scale and the duration of the expected shutdown have yet to be decided, but all of Toyota’s 14 factories in North America could be affected.”

I could write that and finally go to bed, but my mother had told me to believe nobody. Not even a respected newswire that gave its name to the main Japanese stock index? Not even that. An early call to Toyota HQ reaches spokesman Dion Corbett, who has a completely different story.