Recently, the market has moved its sight from US-China trade war to Australia-China trade conflict, and the market also started to worry about the supply issue of iron ore in China, because Australia was the main supplier of iron ore to China.

In 2020, the total imports of iron ore from Australia to China were around 1.2 billion tons, and the iron ore price also increased by 9.5% year on year, reached the historical high.

However, although some of the markets believed the Chinese government would compromise this time because of the raw material supply related to the whole domestic steel industry, they're some other countries that also could provide iron ore instead, such as the Republic of Sierra Leone.

By the official statistic, the Republic of Sierra Leone had exported a huge amount of iron ore to China in 2011, but after the production been reduced, the total exports to China came to 0 in 2020.

Nevertheless, the Republic of Sierra Leone has re-started exporting iron ore to China from the beginning of this year, and the market predicted that it could become another important iron ore supplier to China, which might decrease the impact of the trade conflict.