I think this is a ploy by the Americans to boost their own automotive industry. Bear in mind the Detroit automotive are bleeding badly. Ford, GM, Chrysler just cannot compete with the Jap and Germans. Instead of strengthening themselves, they are trying to weaken their No. 1 competitor. This has a very big impact not just for their domestic market but also at a time when they are competing for the 2nd largest market, China. I saw the "interrogation" of the Toyota president by the US senators. They are even asking Toyota to be "transparent" and share their global sales, recall, safety, etc information. Knowing jolly well the Toyota president cannot speak English, they grilled him using an interpretor. The senator was even at a point sarcastic about the way the Toyota president speaks. The whole facade is to embarrass Toyota. There may have been fault with the car but I am sure it has been exagerated and blown out of proportion in a bid to erode/halt the advances of Toyota in US, if not the world.
One of the points being brought out is that the fault was swiftly dealt with in JDM makes of a particular model while the rest of the world is kept in the dark. So the interesting thing for Singapore is that if a parallel import such as Mark X is discovered to have a fault. Will it be dealt with along the other JDM or is up to the local agent to initiate a recall.