Economic coercion from China could cut off Australia’s fuel supplies, crippling the vast country’s food and transport sectors, according to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.
Marles, who is also Australia’s defence minister, said that Australia’s exposure to economic coercion is even greater than the risk of invasion, and the potential of such coercion going forward is also “much more significant.”
“We are much more reliant upon our economic connection as the world. [In] the early 1990s, our trade as a percentage of our GDP was around 32 percent. In 2020, it was up to 45 percent,” he told the ABC Insiders program on Sunday….