Inversely, China is highly reliant on the U.S. for agriculture, Brazil and Australia for meat, etc. China has 1/5th the arable land that the U.S. does, with five times the population. You can't eat silicon chips.
China is nutritionally only reliant on the rest of the world for meat. If they reduce meat consumption, they can provide nutrition for all of their citizens with their arable land alone.
China produces cheap manufactured goods. But the U.S. is the world's largest producer of cheap agricultural goods. In fact, China's largest sources of meat source much of their feed from the U.S. The U.S. also pretty much only produces soy for export to China, as does Brazil. My point is that people thing the global economy would collapse if China stopped exporting manufactured goods, but China would starve without the rest of the world feeding their people.
China may be able to feed its people with its arable land, but the reality is that it would be only at a sustenance level. This is why China is investing so heavily in African agriculture.
A little under half of soybean production is exported from the US. The rest is used here for oil products, protein products and animal feed. Apparently, 90% of our cooking oil comes from soybean (usually sold as vegetable oil).
