I am trying to understand the Japanese Grand Strategy in WW2 when it comes to handling the US. My current understand, based primarily on extensive Wikipedia reading is as follows:
Motivation: The Japanese industry had an unmet need for resources that they couldn't meet through import (partially because they were embargoed by the US). It was felt necessary to get control of Indonesia to fix this, and seen as certain that the US would intervene. The attack on the US was meant to preempt this, and the main war goal against the US was to simply get them to back down. The odds were not seen as good though.
Strategy:
Analysis: Clearly, the plan was off the rails by the end of Midway (somewhere around moving from 2. to 3.); and it seems near impossible to imagine Leyte Gulf ending with a resounding Japanese victory.
My question: I don't follow how the Japanese planned to transition from success in Step 4 to achieving US withdrawal from the war. Given the massive disparity in production and training capacities, the US could have just created another fleet and tried again. What was the level of understanding the Japanese decision makers had about how the US would decide whether to keep fighting or not? Stuff like the timing of Pearl Harbor vs the official war declaration or the treatment of US PoWs seem to me as hardening the views of the US public, and making it harder to imagine them accepting a "white peace" of some sort.