Toyota Motor Corp. will stop building cars in Australia in 2017, spelling the end of the local industry after Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. announced last year they also plan to pull out.
Toyota, which started making cars in the country in 1963, cited high manufacturing costs, an elevated Australian dollar and low economies of scale. The company has 2,500 manufacturing employees in Australia, it said in a statement Monday.
The decision marks the end of an Australian car industry that traces its roots to 1901, as a fall in trade tariffs, the small scale of local plants and the surge in the Australian dollar — a rise of almost 50 percent against the U.S. currency from 2009 to 2012 — pushed consumers to cheaper imports.
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