WASHINGTON — Nobody ever won a battle playing defense.

That's loosely paraphrasing George Patton, the World War II general who led American troops in pursuit of liberating France from Nazi domination.

Wednesday morning, on President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day," automotive industry analyst Michael Dunne was quoting Patton to describe how Trump's tariff scheme amounts to a defensive play against China's voracious auto industry.

He was also quoting Chairman Mao.

"Everything under the heavens is in utter chaos. The situation is excellent for me," Dunne said in Mandarin before translating it into English for a roomful of automotive, energy and transportation industry executives attending a conference in Washington that was colliding with the Trump presidency's pursuit of a new global economic order across town.

From the outside, the situation for China and its booming auto industry looks excellent.

But heaven knows there's chaos reigning across a U.S. auto industry that's all but lost its foothold in China just as Trump imposes 25% tariffs on every Chevy Equinox assembled in Mexico, every Chrysler Pacifica assembled in Canada, every brake light from Japan and every tire from Thailand that gets shipped into the United States.

Liberation Day for a new global order is just another defensive maneuver to protect a domestic auto industry that's scrambling to match the methodical might of China's government-subsidized auto industry, Dunne argued.

China is the world's No. 1 exporter of automobiles, shipping 6 million cars to every time zone and virtually every country in the world except the United States and Canada. And contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of China's exports (80%) were cars with internal combustion engines, not battery electric propulsion, according to Dunne.

The cost of assembling a car in China is 25% less than "any country in the world," said Dunne, CEO of Dunne Insights, a San Diego-based information service for the automotive industry.

"We're on an island, vulnerable and not playing offense anymore, going into China and selling our cars," Dunne said. "We're on defense."

"That's the reality we're confronted with today, where China is on an offensive globally, and we're sort of throwing up the tariffs to buy some time," Dunne added. "I'm all for that, but we need to take those next steps and be competitive again globally."

It was a sobering reality check hours before Trump projected a euphoric celebration in the White House Rose Garden, as the president made a "declaration of economic independence."

“It’s such an honor to be able to do this,” said the lifelong tariffs adherent on the 71st day of his second term in the Oval Office.

Trump is absolutely convinced that levying 25% tariffs on allies like Canada and Mexico will force General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis to uproot billions of dollars in capital investments in plants built in those countries over decades and replant them in the United States.

Dunne is warm on tariffs, but cold to the Trumpian belief that they're going to make America's auto industry (foreign or domestic-owned) competitive with China — the real threat to the UAW dues-paying workers Trump and Republicans have spent years courting at the ballot box.

American automakers have seen their once-sturdy foundation in China's market begin to crumble. General Motors Co. used to "easily" post $2 billion annual profits from the world's largest market, Dunne noted. Last year, the Detroit automaker recorded a $5 billion loss in China.

It's hard to see how Trump's tariffs will stop the erosion of global market share for American automakers. No one is buying half-ton Chevy trucks in Shanghai, much less the European Union, which Trump hit with a 20% tariff for auto imports from Italy and Germany.

What the tariffs will most certainly do is make entry-level vehicles assembled outside of the United States more expensive to buy or finance.

Last year, GM shipped more than 200,000 Chevy Equinoxes from Mexico into the U.S. along with about 70,000 GMC Terrains, the sister small SUV to the Equinox. Yes, they could have been built in Flint, like many entry-level GM cars were a generation or two ago. But at what price, given the higher cost of unionized labor?

These are questions that will swirl in car dealership showrooms in the coming days and weeks.

Dunne spoke at the SAFE Summit on Wednesday morning alongside Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican businessman who was once one of Ohio's mega car dealers, owning dealerships under the Buick, GMC, Infiniti, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Porsche Volkswagen brands.

Since defeating longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown last fall, Moreno has emerged as the Senate's car guy, homing in on automotive policy in the nation's capital.

He's aligned himself with Trump, sponsoring legislation to allow buyers to write off interest payments on auto loans for U.S.-made vehicles — a big Trump campaign promise — and attacking the pollution-limiting regulatory schemes of the Biden administration of the state of California.

The senator has also homed in on what he considers the sins of the past that have created such an imbalance, where 3% of cars sold in China are imports and 48% of vehicles sold in the U.S. are imports.

Moreno said it was "catastrophically stupid" for past American presidents to sit back and let the Chinese put up trade barriers on U.S. imports that made the likes of GM and Ford Motor Co. build money-losing factories in China.

"We got played like suckers," he said. "And what President Trump talks about is exactly right."

Moreno argued the United States "can't compete" with a country like China that has a human rights abuse track record of exploiting its people "for the purposes of dominating manufacturing."

"We don't want auto workers in Ohio or Michigan or anywhere else getting paid the same way that auto slaves in China get paid," Moreno said. "The one thing Henry Ford taught us is that the workers who make these cars should be able to afford the very products they're making."

It remains to be seen whether an hourly GM worker will be able to afford to pay 25% more each month for a tariff-penalized Chevy Equinox, a popular model in the employee parking lots of Michigan assembly plants.

Dunne was more powertrain agnostic, arguing the political fight over EV mandates doesn't address the reality that China is gobbling up more overall global market share with every passing White House occupant.

The war won't be won on defense. The United States has to start playing offense again in the auto industry, he argued.

"I don't care if it's gasoline or electric," he said, "but we cannot remain on this island here in North America and hope for the best."

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