The Pentagon’s package of support for rare earths company MP Minerals, announced on 10 July, should free the US military and eventually much of US industry from dependence on Chinese supply chains for rare earth …
Articles by: "David Uren"
The Defence budget squeeze has starved the Royal Australian Navy of sustainment funding. We see this in the scandalous state of two of the Royal Australian Navy’s most significant ships, revealed in an Australian National …
China has reasserted its dominance over Australia’s export markets, taking a record of almost 1 billion tonnes of mineral resources and agricultural commodities last year, and displacing the trading partners that helped Australia out during …
Australia’s defence manufacturers are essentially a cottage industry, with the average supplier employing only 13 people and achieving net annual sales of about $2.2 million. These averages, drawn from the annual review of the industry …
Australia’s free-trade agreements with nations other than China have delivered diversification in neither exports nor imports over the past decade, leaving Australia more tightly bound by trade to China than any other advanced nation. While …
Australia’s ability to produce basic metals, including copper, lead, zinc, nickel and construction steel, is in jeopardy, with ageing plants struggling against Chinese competition. The multinational commodities company Trafigura has put its Australian operations under …
How will the US assault on trade affect geopolitical relations within Asia? Will nations turn to China and seek protection by trading with each other? The happy snaps a week ago of the trade ministers …
Australia, Britain and European countries should loosen budget rules to allow borrowing to fund higher defence spending, a new study by the Kiel Institute suggests. Currently, budget debt rules are forcing governments to finance increases …
Anyone involved in Australia’s critical minerals industry would be rolling their eyes at the transaction still reported to be under consideration between Ukraine and the United States. US President Donald Trump was initially asking for …
Australia has been losing so many sovereign manufacturing capabilities over the past two decades that it is hard to know where to draw the line. The Whyalla steel mill may mark the spot. The Australian …
The rising use of economic coercion is a symptom of an increasingly unstable world that is struggling to contain rise of China and is no longer bound by the institutions established in the wake of …
US President Donald Trump has called on NATO members to lift their defence spending from the current target of 2 percent of GDP to 5 percent. ‘They could all afford it,’ he said, warning that the …