He was anxious. The city was anxious.
By the time the negotiations ended, Lu PingAn was a little dumbfounded. The war had not even begun, so how had things reached the final stage from the very start?
The hell, how many laws and plans had they trampled all over? Did Chang Ping State Prefecture know they were playing like this?
But Lu PingAn soon understood why.
"Iron ore went up 300%—pfft, what the hell is this?"
Aus and Australia's fall were only the beginning of a chain reaction.
Australia's domestic industry had nearly collapsed, yet it possessed world-class mineral resources. It had long since become the Resource Depot of certain countries, and its fall would naturally cause raw materials throughout the international market to collapse.
It was not simply because their minerals could no longer be shipped out. Rather, the insecurity of the entire ocean had caused already sluggish global shipping to collapse outright.
And once a strategic resource became scarce, its price increase was never based on demand, but on psychological expectations.
When every nation and major faction began preparing for war, international strategic supplies would soar in price. Especially when everyone knew that military industry would drive up demand for steel. Even without the involvement of international speculators, countries scrambling for strategic resources would inevitably send raw material prices skyrocketing.
"Won't the state do anything?"
"They will. There are internal supply channels with fixed prices, but they'll definitely be quota-based, and they definitely won't be enough."
Limited strategic resources would certainly be used where they mattered most. This was also the root cause of the Eastern Kingdom's forced elimination of outdated production capacity. The coordinating departments could not possibly watch ore being wasted so directly.
"...You want to establish your own import channels?"
"There's no other way. Some