Quite a good point about the race only being about final gearing, not power.
But no Japanese tank I am aware of had a serious chance against any western tank.
Their guns were not powerful enough to kill our tanks.
As for any link up with Rommel. No way.
The Afrika Korps’ Achilles heel was logistics. The Royal Navy controlled the Mediterranean and remember within a year of the Pearl Harbor attack we invaded North Africa.
Akrika Korps was doomed because Mussolini bit off more than he could chew with his ill fated military adventures that spread German resources too thin when they had to bail him out.
As I remember it US industrial output was greater than the whole rest of the world in 1940 and in 1914 it was greater than the combined output of all the belligerents fightnig WWI.
We were always going to kick their butts.
They just didn’t have a competitive industrial base, nor access to natural resources.
Pissy little countries, both of them.