IMHO it’s a sign that China doesn’t have as much gold as they’ve led us to believe, or they’d use gold as the basis, not iron ore.
China as I see it is doing everything it can to promote de-dollarization, in every sector of finance and trade. The article doesn’t touch on their SGE Gold depositories being built worldwide. Those Gold depositories are to be used as Yuan/ Gold convertibility in trade settlements.
That said, Iron/ steel are war metals. As we know, they also control the rare earths and silver sectors, both critical war metals.
President Trump is obviously well aware, however the time required to get our critical minerals into domestic production will take years. We can only hope the next President has the same mission.
I am disappointed he has not yet done a full audit of our Gold reserves with Gold sales now surpassing US Treasury debt instruments.