[lategloriousgnu]

39% all goods exported from Australia in 2019-20 were to China. Of that 39%, over half of that was iron ore. Australian iron ore production is valued at $136 billion a year to the economy.

Unfortunately, Australia really doesn't have much leverage in this space, and forcibly re-nationalizing an asset like that, would cause major diplomatic problems, like the harsh trade sanctions imposed by China over the last few years due to Australia backing a COVID inquiry.

[dzhiurgis]

34% in 2022 and likely will keep dropping as that ship has sailed few years ago.

[newsclues]

Flipside, in the event of diplomatic breakdowns with China towards conflict, it becomes easy and profitable to re-nationalize for national security reasons.

[worthless-trash]

I wonder how much of that 36% gets turned into metals and then shipped right back to australia. Maybe its time that Australia start doing the ore processing in-country and cut out the middle man.

[simonh]

Good question and it’s an interesting rabbit hole to dive into. Chinese steel exports to Australia are a rounding error. Australia has a relatively small population.

https://legacy.trade.gov/steel/countries/pdfs/exports-china....

Australia doesn’t have much in the way of domestic manufacturing need for steel, so there’s little internal base demand to support production. Australian labour costs more, so as a steel producer it would have trouble competing with China on export markets.

The US and Japan do have domestic steel production, but they both have steel hungry manufacturing sectors, and anyway they specialise in high quality specialist steel products. Those take expensive specialist facilities and highly skilled workers, but there’s no real way for Australia to develop such specialist facilities and skills from scratch.

[tmnvix]

> Australian labour costs more, so as a steel producer it would have trouble competing with China on export markets.

I never imagined that steel production would be particularly labour intensive.

[worthless-trash]

I can't tell for scale, but I rememer BHP billiton spinning out bluescope steel as a company which at that time was creating something like 5 milion tonnes of steel a year. I have a feeling that there is capability, but I'm not sure that its the right capability (as this is not my area).

I'm just confused how it would be cheaper to ship the unprocessed ore across the ocean at a cheaper cost than processing it locally and shipping the finished product.