I love this tool with data up to 2016 showing worldwide trade by product and by country. Here's Australia - what a healthy economy, aye?
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profi.../#Destinations
Here's
Norway in the year 2016. Almost 50% of their exports are fossil fuel. But: most of the earnings of this trade are the people's wealth, not the wealth of a few individuals. 67% of StatOil are still in the hands of the state and were not privatised.
If African countries only followed Norway in this... their natural resources could heal all 55 countries on the continent in one go. Poverty would be gone, education would rise - hatred among ethnic nations would cease.
Instead, "western" human beings continue to rape the people. 100 years ago, it was "western countries", now it's "western corporations" doing it.
And here's the US.
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profi...#Trade_Balance
And Russia
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profi...#Trade_Balance
Funny how all countries' economies kicked off from ~2001 onwards. 10 years after the iron curtain fell?
Or was it
China's huge population emerging out of poverty in the 90s and formally joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001?