Now that the US has declared that China is its greatest threat , we should be transitioning to processing some of our iron ore & base metals to diversify trade away from China and meet the manufacturing needs of OECD countries. China is spending hundreds of billions in its OBI to connect it with consumer markets of central Asis, Russia, Europe & Africa and backloading coal, iron ore & base metals.
The OBI excludes Australia & the USA. It seems absurd for our government to be supporting the US push to bankrupt China ( as it did with the USSR) when we reply on China economically ( We have a $45 billion trade surplus with China) until such time that we are economically independant from them.
This is why I have suggested the Emerald-Pilbarra railway project as the first phase of Aus diversifying trade away from China. We should simply add an extra tax to our Iron Ore & Coal exports to finance it. The MRRT would have produced $3 billion a year but the Abbott Government scotched that as payback to the Mining Council of Australia representing foreign owned miners All IMO
