Toyota Won’t Raise Prices to Help Rivals

Toyota Motor Corp. said it wouldn’t raise car prices to help U.S. rivals, breaking with its chairman’s comments a day earlier that voluntary price increases and other steps were in order to help restore health to the U.S. auto industry.

“Our basic stance is that prices are something for the market to determine,” a spokesman at Japan’s top automaker said. “We are not thinking about changing prices in order to help the U.S. auto industry.”

Japanese brands collectively grabbed a record 30% share of the U.S. auto market last year, and some executives have become more sensitive about how their companies’ success would play out at the political level.