Toyota Will Buy $76 Million of American Chips

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday that it plans to buy about $76 million worth of semiconductor components from five U.S. chip makers over the next three years.

The announcement came on the same day that U.S. and Japanese trade representatives announced that they had reached agreement on a series of social and economic reforms designed to reduce the huge U.S. trade deficit with Japan.

Toyota said it would buy a wide variety of the small electronic components that handle tasks ranging from guiding automatic windows to regulating fuel flows--from Intel Corp., International Rectifier Corp., Motorola Inc., National Semiconductor Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc.