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Notes -
This is true of the Detroit motor companies, but I'm not completely comfortable calling that "Japanese automakers defeating American manufacturers": I've known lots of friends and family that drive "import" brands that were wholly built in America. And looking at the job postings for Honda and Toyota, it looks like there are no shortage of design engineering positions around the US either. At one point 30 years ago, it may have seemed imminent that American auto manufacturing would have gone extinct, but looking at it from a 2024 perspective, that conflict seems to fall on different lines: Detroit and its largely rust-belt, union factories versus more recent construction sunbelt at-will manufacturing funded by globalized brands.
I think some of this relates to the economics (and international trade politics) of transporting assembled cars versus franchising a new factories elsewhere, but while there would be some egg-in-the-face for Detroit if BYD, JAC, or Geely start selling lots of cars onto American roads, but if those cars are largely built by American hands and at least partly designed by American engineers, it's conceivably not that different from where we are today. The economics of Chinese Communism probably complicate this somewhat, but, as the kids say, it's complicated and it's not completely unfair to point out that the US government owned a decent chunk of GM for a while. I think it's plausible it could get horse traded by political leaders into a victory for globalism (similar to how the "Japan takes over the world" trope has been negotiated down to seemingly nation-less multinational corporations and occasional infusions of pop-culture), but I wouldn't bet heavily on that outcome today.
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