Toyota Motor Corp – Lobbying Governance & Transparency

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Lobbying Governance

Overall Assessment	Analysis	Score
Comprehensive	Toyota discloses a detailed and multi-layered process for governing both its direct and indirect climate-related lobbying that indicates comprehensive oversight and continuous alignment with the Paris Agreement. It has published a stand-alone "Review of Toyotas Industry Associations" in successive years which "reviewed the industry associations publicly stated policy and advocacy positions for the year 2021 against our climate related policy positions" and, in 2022, went further to test each association "with the goals of the Paris Agreement, rather than Toyotas stance," using the IPCCs Sixth Assessment Report as the benchmark. The company explains that "If an associations advocacy does not align with our positions, we will increase our engagement with them to change their stance" and, where Paris misalignment persists, "we will encourage the association to review its stance through constructive dialogue [and] reexamine the industry association membership in an appropriate manner each year", demonstrating an explicit mechanism for correcting or exiting misaligned bodies. Direct lobbying is subject to prior internal sign-off: "Individual advocacy activities are subject to a prior review by the officer or the department in charge of advocacy for its consistency with the company advocacy policy," and the practical steps inside JAMA show how "the Toyota senior executive checks up on the consistency with Toyota's strategy and, based on this, voices opinions" to secure alignment. Oversight responsibility is clearly assigned: "the Board of Directors is the ultimate decision-making and oversight body for addressing climate-related issues," while "officers and executives in charge" set and approve the advocacy policy, providing both board-level and named-role accountability. Taken together, the public audit of trade-association positions, the defined escalation and review processes for misalignment, the advance approval of all direct lobbying, and board-level supervision indicate strong, transparent governance that covers all channels of lobbying and meets best-practice expectations for climate-lobbying alignment. View Sources	A

Overall Assessment

Analysis

Score

Comprehensive

Toyota discloses a detailed and multi-layered process for governing both its direct and indirect climate-related lobbying that indicates comprehensive oversight and continuous alignment with the Paris Agreement. It has published a stand-alone "Review of Toyotas Industry Associations" in successive years which "reviewed the industry associations publicly stated policy and advocacy positions for the year 2021 against our climate related policy positions" and, in 2022, went further to test each association "with the goals of the Paris Agreement, rather than Toyotas stance," using the IPCCs Sixth Assessment Report as the benchmark. The company explains that "If an associations advocacy does not align with our positions, we will increase our engagement with them to change their stance" and, where Paris misalignment persists, "we will encourage the association to review its stance through constructive dialogue [and] reexamine the industry association membership in an appropriate manner each year", demonstrating an explicit mechanism for correcting or exiting misaligned bodies. Direct lobbying is subject to prior internal sign-off: "Individual advocacy activities are subject to a prior review by the officer or the department in charge of advocacy for its consistency with the company advocacy policy," and the practical steps inside JAMA show how "the Toyota senior executive checks up on the consistency with Toyota's strategy and, based on this, voices opinions" to secure alignment. Oversight responsibility is clearly assigned: "the Board of Directors is the ultimate decision-making and oversight body for addressing climate-related issues," while "officers and executives in charge" set and approve the advocacy policy, providing both board-level and named-role accountability. Taken together, the public audit of trade-association positions, the defined escalation and review processes for misalignment, the advance approval of all direct lobbying, and board-level supervision indicate strong, transparent governance that covers all channels of lobbying and meets best-practice expectations for climate-lobbying alignment.

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Lobbying Transparency

Overall Assessment	Analysis	Score
Comprehensive	Toyota Motor Corp provides extensive, concrete information about its climate-related lobbying. It names numerous specific measures it has tried to influence, including Japan’s “GX Promotion Act,” participation in the “GX-ETS” market, proposals to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry during the “Council for a Strategy for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells,” comments to U.S. EPA and NHTSA on forthcoming GHG and CAFE standards, and advocacy around the EU’s 2035 zero-emission CO₂ target and the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation. The company also describes the channels it uses and the decision-makers it addresses: more than 100 executives met “over 100 members of Congress” during a Washington fly-in, executives sat in a “Round-Table Meeting between Prime Minister Kishida and JAMA,” presented to METI advisory panels, and hosted a “Parliamentarian breakfast” for 28 German MPs—demonstrating direct meetings, formal presentations, and organised events aimed at clearly identified government bodies in Japan, the United States, and Europe. Toyota goes further by spelling out the results it wants, asking governments to “change public vehicles to zero-emission vehicles (BEVs and FCEVs),” “lower the maximum distance between hydrogen refuelling stations and speed up their deployment,” provide “new clean vehicle (EV) credits that are applied equally and fairly across all manufacturers,” and “formulate the optimal roadmap for the Green Transformation (GX).” These detailed disclosures on the policies addressed, the mechanisms and targets of engagement, and the precise outcomes sought show a comprehensive level of transparency in the company’s climate-policy lobbying.	A