Trade Audit — Australia

Australia built the fastest export growth of any advanced commodity economy since 1990 on a single, narrow bet: Chinese demand for its raw materials. That bet generated extraordinary wealth — and left the country with the lowest manufacturing share of GDP of any major advanced economy, a research base in decline, and a concentrated dependence on one buyer. Now lithium is repeating the iron-ore pattern exactly: Australia mines more lithium than any country on Earth, converts about 3% of it at home, and ships the rest as raw concentrate to China. The question is whether Australia captures the value chain this time — or rents out the deposit again.