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TOKYO — The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday forced multinational companies to close factories, fight fires and move workers, inflicting at least short-term damage on Japan’s fragile economy.
Assessing the full economic impact was impossible in the hours after the quake. But traffic clogged streets, trains stopped, flights were grounded and phone service was disrupted or cut off. U.S. companies DuPont and Procter & Gamble said communications problems made it hard to gauge the effect on their operations in Japan.
Japanese stocks plunged. The benchmark Nikkei index fell 1.7 percent, and the Japanese market was open for only about 15 minutes after the quake.
