I'm a big fan of when dependency chains break. For example; if chinese deliveries don't keep flowing to the US the most obvious and most reported one will be soviet looking store shelves.

But, the rare earths is a funny one; not the only one; but a funny one Few people realize that nearly every motor in drills, robots, cars, etc use them in quantity.

The US could begin mining and buying them from other people, but they aren't prepared to refine them, nor turn them into the things which people have been ordering from china in quantity.

What other businesses start to falter if they don't get their rare earth products; there are all kinds of other rare earths used in oil refining etc. But, motors are a simple and easy to understand one (somewhat).

Empty retail shelves aren't the only problem. There are the gobs of bits that hospitals use; from the simple like gloves and gowns, to IV lines, to things used in surgury.

Then, there are all the people involved in getting chinese goods from the port to a shopping cart; the warehouse people, the truckers, the retail employees.

Then there are the people who depend on those people, and on and on.

Some areas are easy to fill in the gaps and make do quickly. But some areas are finely tuned to the existing flow of goods. Not only to they come apart if this stops, but in some cases a long gap could see some of these companies retool, go under, or their people just move on.

For example, some of the federal workers recently fired might be among a few dozens of people in the entire world doing that thing. They apprenticed to people who apprenticed to people who apprenticed. If they move on, and the government realizes they were doing a valuable job, it will be insanely hard to hire anyone with the correct skills.

In some cases these people lived in odd places due to the nature of their jobs. The moment they lose their jobs, they would start moving.

In other cases they did their jobs becaused they loved them; but are now working for private industry for far more money; they won't come back.

A two week lull in chinese shipments won't break everything, but some cracks will start to develop. As this goes on longer those cracks will reveal structural weaknesses. Financing which dries up and then goes away.

Another huge factor is the number of countries outside of the US who are OK with it being knocked down a few pegs. This not only means they won't help as they would, even a year ago; but these countries will somewhat actively move onto a post US centric world.

My prediction is that the swift system will see a huge replacement show up. Another is that various countries are now doing trade deals amongst themselves which fly in the face of previous trade agreement with the US.

That is, the US would not have allowed these trade agreements to happen as they were incompatible with existing US ones. But, the US tore up those agreements, and countries are now moving on.

The US will, no doubt, demand that these don't happen, and if they do, that they are dropped; but that isn't going to happen. That ship sailed.

To me; it is systems; and the easiest to understand system is the US sale of debt. As a former treasury secretary recently said: We get great stuff from china in exchange for bits of paper we print; is that a bad deal?

I suspect this deal is now over. People have realized that they were the ones being ripped off. Now, they are going to demand real stuff from the US in exchange for their good stuff. Facebook etc isn't going to be considered good stuff. Commodities are one of the few material goods the rest of the world wants from the US.