Summary

Rolling blackouts have come to China’s manufacturing heartland, stifling factory activity ahead of the critical winter export season. There are concerns over consumer supply heading into colder weather in a region that’s home to over 100 million people. And China’s national team has been given marching orders to sweep up LNG and coal at any cost from supply-constrained global markets.

Yet despite all this, and despite coal prices hovering at record highs, Indian firms have been leisurely snapping up Australian thermal coal – some of the highest quality coal available – at significant discount via shipments that were originally bound for China.

Such is the ongoing exercise in economic and geopolitical self-harm that is the China-Australia trade war.