A top executive of Toyota Motor Sales...

A top executive of Toyota Motor Sales USA charged that a suspended U.S. Customs Service ruling to reclassify imported multipurpose vehicles (MPVs) as trucks would jeopardize the financial health of Toyota’s 1,100 U.S. dealers and its 54,000 American workers. Bob McCurry, executive vice president of TMS, told an informal hearing by the Treasury that the Jan. 4 ruling, which would impose substantially higher tariffs on such vehicles by considering them trucks instead of cars, “has Detroit’s fingerprints all over it.” The Treasury suspended the Customs Service ruling last week so it could review what it called “the legal ramifications” of the decision. The review could take three months.