Subject: Re: "The Art of The Deal"
I suspect that China could shut the US economy down by banning the export of only (say) 20 products,

Yes. Yes! YES!!! That's why the US needs to wean itself from such a large dependence on China. These was a recent news article that said some of the crucial materials for the latest US fighter jets come from China.

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/... and https://www.rand.org/pubs/arti...
"All of which makes China's near-total domination of the rare earth market a matter of economic and national security concern."

How insane is it for a country to intensely depend on an adversary(ish) country for some necessary good? If you recall, Germany laughed at Trump 45 when he said they should not depend on Russia for natural gas. Look what happened.