With FIA president Max Mosley set to hold talks with teams after the Chinese Grand Prix to discuss a way forward to bring operating budgets down, conversation in the Fuji paddock has been dominated about what action can be taken.
And although most teams appear to favour the increased use of standard parts, Howett believes that more damage that good could be done if too radical proposals are pushed through.
"I think that the danger is that a knee-jerk reaction could be catastrophic," he said at the Japanese Grand Prix. "In the end, if we have pressure, we will be told that's the budget and we will survive.
"In the end, I suppose there are three core drivers of the cost: one is manpower, second is investment which fundamentally we have to pay for, because it's capitalised and has to be depreciated and the third is the material used, what we actually use for each race.
"Very simplistically, if we get told this is the budget for competing in this year, next year we will compete and we will do the best available job that we can within that.
"Obviously the social issue is what will happen to the motor sport infrastructure and it goes beyond teams. The UK, in particular, I think has a multi-million dollar motor sport industry which could be destroyed and that, I think, should be something that people do worry about and take into consideration.
"But in the end, simplistically, if Toyota tell us that's the budget, we will operate at that budget and make the best professional decisions to handle that."
Howett believes that it is too easy, amid the wider financial difficulties being experienced in the outside world, to paint a bleak picture for the future of F1.
In fact, he thinks the sport's position and attraction to outside companies actually means it could come out of the situation stronger than before.
"I think we need to put things in context really. The first is if you look at some of the figures released for the British premier league in terms of teams' liquidity, the issues being faced by F1 teams are relatively minor.
"If you look at the advertising budgets of large corporations excluding car manufacturers, they are over $2-3bn a year, so I think one of the issues is to continue... because Formula One is so powerful and so strong, to actually work with the commercial rights holder to actually demonstrate the value of utilising Formula One as a marketing tool and I think we need to do more effort on that.
"Clearly as a car manufacturer we will come under pressure because a number of markets are depressed, others are fairly buoyant like Russia and China, but I think the strong companies who continue to invest in marketing, who continue to invest in technology will become the winners.
"We should also look at the opportunity that this sort of situation presents, not only the pressure, so you can paint a very black picture or you can say there is a lot of upside here for Formula One and also for those well-managed Formula One teams and well-managed manufacturers.
"So yes, we will go through a hard time, I'm sure that we will all survive, and we will probably come out with a strong sport."
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