yeah, basically. We export iron ore and import cars. If the global trade system shut down we'd be sat on a huge pile of ore with absolutely no way of turning it

yeah, basically. We export iron ore and import cars. If the global trade system shut down we'd be sat on a huge pile of ore with absolutely no way of turning it into anything useful. It's similar with food: our Wheatbelt produces vast amounts of wheat. Which is great but kinda useless without global trade; we can't turn all that wheat into actual food ourselves.