As for them using our debt as a cudgel, we can blame no one for that debt but ourselves. W/o the debt, there is no cudgel. The borrower is always subservient to the lender.
Whether or not China is purposefully manipulating our debt or the Dollar to their own benefit, as if everybody else including our own gov’t is not, getting into a trade war with China doesn't seems to be the smart thing to do, nor will it solve our massive problems at home.
You know, whenever I encounter a sentence such as this, I test it by inverting the parties involved, to smoke out the bias. You should try it sometime:
First, Americans have every right to spend their own money with their own best interests in mind. If that is contrary to Chinese interests, too bad.
Then, we move on to your second paragraph, and what an amazing example of an insincere attempt at turning the tables it is. You and people who agree with you are the ones advocating the trade policy that created the problem, that you brought up and pointed out yourself by the way, of China being in a position to punish us for not behaving to their liking. I blame you and people who think like you. I am not to blame. And, yes, a borrower is always subservient to the lender, that is Biblical and it is an ancient truth. Funny how you seem to want to treat this subservience as something other than a symptom of the policies you advocate.
What, exactly, would be the consequence of "getting into a trade war" with China at this juncture? Walmart would get nailed. Clothing, consumer goods, electronics. Would "the smart thing to do" be to continue down this road, deeper and deeper into subservience as you yourself termed it? Isn't that the road to serfdom? And, how does this solve any problem at all? It appears to me to hold out hope of nothing more than exacerbating these problems.