Beginning back in the late 1960’s politicians (liberals and RINOs) gave away the US auto industry for personal gain, in pursit of a misguided globalist agenda, or both.
Volkswagen was the only foreign manufacturer with a significant US market and most Japanese cars were looked on as quirky oddities.
There was a time when US auto companies built 75% of the vehicles for the entire world.
Now they don’t even build 75% of the vehicles for America.
You give politicians too much credit and too little to bad management, bad designs/engineering and poor assembly. It was in this period that Detroit began engineering cars to deliberately last no longer than the average loan term.