One thing that the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted, is the frailty of our globalised supply chains. The manufacturing industry has been in a steady state of decline over the last few decades in Australia (and America, and Canada, and I’m sure many other countries). By the late 1950s, manufacturing accounted for almost 30% of Australian GDP, but this has since fallen to about 6%. And now this trend is coming home to bite us. The pandemic has laid bare our over-reliance on internationally produced goods (read: China). This is great for China, but not for other countries which rely heavily on importing life-saving medical equipment and other products from foreign sources. From my point of view, we need to support at least some Australian manufacturing. I’m not saying that we have to manufacture everything (that’s probably an impossibility), however, we should be at least manufacturing things that we need. We shouldn’t have to rely off China to provide us with life-saving medical supplies and personal protective equipment. It just doesn’t make sense, and certainly doesn’t make sense now that global supply chains have been severely impacted by the pandemic. TRADE, GLOBAL POLITICS, AND JOBS
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