Time to slap big tariffs on Chinese streel

Thursday 5 February 2026

As noted many times, Australia enjoyed a few brief sane years of trade diversification when ScoMo stuck COVID up Beijing in 2020 and the nation responded by looking for other markets.

Since then, Albo has bent over forwards to restore the same trade vulnerability.

Thankfully, he partially failed because the Chinese trade mix has changed, and bulk commodityu prices fell.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.