# Australia's trade position back in black



## [t..o..m] (2 October 2008)

> Australia's trade position back in black
> 
> 
> AAP
> ...




Interesting artical


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## mullokintyre (5 October 2021)

From Todays OZ



> Australia’s “extraordinary” trade surplus pushed above $15bn for the first time in August, as booming LNG and coal exports offset the impact of falling iron ore prices and rural sales jumped higher.
> 
> Overall export earnings lifted by $1.9bn, or 4 per cent, to $48.5bn in the month, while imports contracted by 1 per cent to $33.4bn, the seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed.
> 
> ...




There are two things to take from this.
Firstly, Australia's good fortune is driven by all things hated by progressives, mining, fossil fuels, agricultural production.
There were no green industries featured, no socially progressive  production outputs, no climate change breakthroughs.
Secondly, as usual the economists and their forecasts were hopelessly wrong.
Lucky we don't rely on them to provide useful stuff like food or computer apps.
And not surprisingly, in other news,  the RBA kept rates on hold.
Mick


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## bk1 (5 October 2021)

And don't expect the national broadcaster to say anything about it, in fact, just ignore it ever happened.
They are all the same, living in an alternate world with not an objective thought in their collective heads.


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## SyBoo (5 October 2021)




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## qldfrog (5 October 2021)

SyBoo said:


> View attachment 131094





SyBoo said:


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Would be interested by coal position as China is doing an embargo so do we sell cheap to malaysia which resells to China for a profit?


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## Dona Ferentes (5 October 2021)

LNG exports (up 16 per cent month-on-month) and coal (up 13 per cent month-on-month) offset a 4 per cent fall in iron ore exports.


Winter hasn't even begun in the nthn hemisphere.

_and there are vessels that have been offshore China for a year, filled with BOMB (Best Ordinary Mixed Black) coal ex-Newcastle, that are quietly being unloaded (will try and find that source !)_


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## Smurf1976 (5 October 2021)

mullokintyre said:


> Firstly, Australia's good fortune is driven by all things hated by progressives, mining, fossil fuels, agricultural production.
> There were no green industries featured, no socially progressive production outputs, no climate change breakthroughs.



In other words resource extraction and keeping the housing bubble going with low interest rates.

Trouble is, rational discussion on the subject has become pretty much impossible due to the debate assuming a religious-like manner. It's either one extreme or the other rather than seeing things as they are.

Personally well I absolutely accept that we're heavily reliant on mining and services right now but I'd argue it's foolish to intentionally continue that. It's not the basis of a high standard of living First World economy in the long term to be so reliant on so few things especially when they're finite.


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## mullokintyre (6 October 2021)

Smurf1976 said:


> Personally well I absolutely accept that we're heavily reliant on mining and services right now but I'd argue it's foolish to intentionally continue that. It's not the basis of a high standard of living First World economy in the long term to be so reliant on so few things especially when they're finite.



Which is why I am looking at arable land, food production, and sustainable agricultural activities for long term investments.
Once the minerals have gone (and they will), we will need something else relatively unique to our position.
These areas are where I reckon that substitution will occur.
Mick


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## greggles (6 October 2021)

mullokintyre said:


> Once the minerals have gone (and they will), we will need something else relatively unique to our position.




While I agree with you about agriculture, I think that we have barely scratched the surface with regards to the mineral wealth that lies beneath the surface of this continent. However, over time the price of some base metals may decline as a result of decreased demand due to factors such as metal recycling and global economic conditions.

A look at historical base metal prices shows many highs and lows and wild price swings, so we cannot rely on mining long term as the basis of our economy. It would be foolish to do so with so much price volatility. As a nation we need to diversify our economy. As a first world, educated country there are endless possibilities, especially with so much land under our control.


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## basilio (6 October 2021)

mullokintyre said:


> Which is why I am looking at arable land, food production, and sustainable agricultural activities for long term investments.
> Once the minerals have gone (and they will), we will need something else relatively unique to our position.
> These areas are where I reckon that substitution will occur.
> Mick




How about renewable energy produced by thousands of acres of solar panels and sent by underwater cable  to northern neighbours ?
Why not 15 M tons of Green Hydrogen produced from a huge surplus of renewable energy?
What about combining abundant energy and cheap hydrogen to produce  no emission steel?

That is the direction that FMG is taking in response to using Australia resources more thoughtfully and addressing the critical CC issues we are all facing.






						Superpower: Australia’s low carbon opportunity – Ross Garnaut
					






					www.rossgarnaut.com.au


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## qldfrog (6 October 2021)

greggles said:


> While I agree with you about agriculture, I think that we have barely scratched the surface with regards to the mineral wealth that lies beneath the surface of this continent. However, over time the price of some base metals may decline as a result of decreased demand due to factors such as metal recycling and global economic conditions.
> 
> A look at historical base metal prices shows many highs and lows and wild price swings, so we cannot rely on mining long term as the basis of our economy. It would be foolish to do so with so much price volatility. As a nation we need to diversify our economy. As a first world, educated country there are endless possibilities, especially with so much land under our control.



Mining up and low are indeed a given.
We have sun so H2 production, food and i think we have underestimated leveraging our unique flora for medical or agricultural purpose.being in the southern hemisphere and relatively developed, we should be able to discover active component, hybridisation potentials whicj have not been available in overexploited researched northern hemisphere..a pipedream?


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## Smurf1976 (6 October 2021)

greggles said:


> I think that we have barely scratched the surface with regards to the mineral wealth that lies beneath the surface of this continent.



No doubt more will be found.

Ultimately though relying on the extraction of a finite resource comes with a lot of downsides, it's the equivalent of being someone else's casual labour hire worker rather than being the business owner or at least a full time employee. It's selling yourself, no value added, at whatever the market pays.

If you take the ore and process it, well the product is worth far more than the ore and it creates a far broader range of economic benefits. Look at a refinery or smelter and there's a lot of complex technical stuff going on, there's a lot of people involved either as employees or via suppliers and contractors. If you take $10 worth of ore and turn it into product that's worth $50 - $200 (depends on what it is) then that's not only profit for shareholders but a lot of that additional value is being spent in the community, it's going to workers, suppliers, government and so on.

This place in Tassie is roughly a $1 billion a year industry and that's shipping in all the ore and sending out the product, nothing's being dug up on site. 99.995% pure zinc metal is worth far more than the pile of dirt it comes from.









						Google Maps
					

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.




					www.google.com.au


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## bk1 (6 October 2021)

Smurf1976 said:


> Look at a refinery or smelter



- 
Lets have a look then:

2000- 8 Refineries in AU
2003 to 2015 - 7 Refineries
2015 - 4 Refineries
2021- 2 Refineries ? or maybe 1.
local oil refineries have struggled to remain financially viable compared to larger facilities in the Asia-Pacific region with much greater production capacities (i.e. scale) and a fraction of Australian labour costs.

Name any value add industry and rinse and repeat.


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## Austwide (6 October 2021)

I think I read an article a long time ago that said Aus  crude oil is now only essentially the heavier hydro-carbons and it mainly produces greases and not petrol, making processing less profitable.


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## mullokintyre (30 November 2021)

Another quarter, another ecord trade surplus.
From  Todays OZ


> Australia’s current account surplus jumped by $1bn to a historic $23.9bn in the September quarter, extending the record run of surpluses to ten as booming commodity prices continued to drive exports values higher.
> With much of NSW, Victoria and the ACT in lockdown through the period, the Australian Bureau of Statistics also said the government had to borrow $52.5bn “due to spending on business support programs, Covid-19 disaster payments and accelerated roll out of vaccine programs”.
> The nation has experienced a trade boom through Covid-19 health crisis and despite trade aggression from our largest economic partner, China, mostly thanks to sky-high iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas prices.
> International earnings have bolstered government coffers at a time of massive deficits as authorities have outlayed hundreds of billions in emergency support measures.
> ...



Thats a little worrying. Despute a massive trade balance surprlus, there is still large amounts of funds goiing out of the country.
And once again, the trade surplus was driven by all the wrong sort of trade.


> ABS head of international statistics Andrew Tomadini said the record current account surplus “was driven by strong prices for exports of coal and other mineral fuels as well as greater volumes of agricultural exports”.



And as fast as the  parts of the economy that produce tangible things bring the money, the other arms of the government spend it all.



> The separate ABS government spending data also showed the general government net operating balance dropped by $47.6bn to -$45.4bn over the September quarter, as tax revenue plunged by 17 per cent and expenses increased by 9 per cent.



Mick


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## mullokintyre (1 December 2021)

Todays GDP report out
From ABC News


> Australia's economy shrank 1.9 per cent in the September quarter, but was still 3.9 per cent bigger than it was at the same point in 2020, after the initial COVID-19 lockdowns.
> 
> The result was much better than most economists had feared, with forecasts centring on a 2.7 per cent quarterly decline as large parts of the economy were shut in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT for most or all of the September quarter.



And a consistent theme  continues, the economic forecasters got it wrong again. I mean you can understand a slippage 10% either way, its not a perfect science, but just shy of 30%  higher is s big margin of error.


> Those lockdowns were reflected in a 4.8 per cent fall in household consumption spending, led by a 5.8 per cent slump in services spending centred on hospitality, recreation and culture, and transport.
> 
> The acting head of national accounts at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Sean Crick, said non-lockdown states helped partially offset the decline in Australia's south-east.
> 
> ...



Lockdowns in the hands of the states  are a bit like interest rate levers in the hands of the RBA.
An unwieldy over/under reaction scenario that is usually late , and prolonged longer than needed.
Mick


> The September quarter slump again left Australia's economy smaller than it was prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
> 
> "GDP in the September quarter 2021 was 0.2 per cent below the December quarter 2019 pre-pandemic level," Mr Crick said.


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