Half the Venezuelan economy has disappeared

[Pemalite]

palou said:

Pemalite said:

Citation needed.
Australia produces more food than it consumes.

We also have a ton of resources to be energy and resource self-sufficient (Which we also export to the USA), tons of Uranium and Coal, Iron Ore coming out of our Posteriors... Oil and Gas? Sure do.
Plus... We have the advantage of a smaller population to reduce the strain on all of the resources on this continent.

However... Despite that we will still import food and resources if it's cheaper, that doesn't mean we are reliant on those countries... It just makes us financially prudent.

Economically self-sufficient, I mine. Sure, you could survive alone. Would you be able to sustain an economy anywhere close to what you currently hold? No, certainly not. The majority of the value of consumer products purchased in Australia (phones, cars, clothes, etc...) are foreign (as is the case everywhere), and Australia certainly does *not* have the capacity to sustain that within its borders, either.

Looking through the data, yeah... US isn't either. Closer, though. Mostly just by being bigger, lol.

We aren't heavy with manufacturing. We are a resources and services driven economy, that's partially a good thing as we don't need to concern ourselves with trying to compete with China.

But that doesn't mean if the day Australia was to "go it alone" that we couldn't, we do have all the resources we need.
We also do manufacture Clothes, in-fact we have been very successful with our surf brands world-wide like Billabong, Ripcurl. - Even Quicksilver started in Australia before having American claws sunk into them. :P

Car manufacturing (Holden and Toyota) ceased a few years ago, but we do still manufacture vehicles in a small capacity (Military, specialized, market specific and so on).
Ford Australia still has design and development facilities, meaning we are one of the few countries that can design, develop and manufacture mass market cars from absolute scratch if we wanted.

Where we do come up short though is silicon/electronics/processors, we don't have any fabs.