They have the economic ability to do so but China also imports a lot of critical things, such as clean water and animal feed, that it doesn't really have the ca

They have the economic ability to do so but China also imports a lot of critical things, such as clean water and animal feed, that it doesn't really have the capacity for at home. There's a lot of tit-for-tat actions that the US (or the global West, for that matter) could take that would cripple China socially. A bunch of starving, young, educated men with no job prospects and no family prospects is the CCP's nightmare scenario. That sort of thing generally leads to revolutions. The problem is that both actors have some serious leverage, and either side using that leverage in a serious, combative manner would harm the both the aggressor and the recipient. Nobody wants that.