Napier, MSCNewsWire, 2 May 2016 - The elephant in the conference room during the meeting of premiers John Key of New Zealand and Manuel Valls of France remains the United States imposed and enforced embargo on exporting dairy products to Russia.

The embargo includes everything else too. But it is the ban on dairy exports to Russia that is doing the most damage to the two economies.

The damage to the French is only partly minimised by the United States nudging Australia to French shipyards for the construction of 12 new submarines (pictured.)

The deal compensates France for the loss under the US embargo of its contract to provide the Russians with surface craft for the Russian arctic.

The immense submarine contract allocated by the Australian government to France’s marine constructors also indicates a determination by the United States to ensure that the replacements for the Collins class submarine have full quality control at all stages during the newbuildings.

Australia’s own intervention in New Zealand’s surface vessel procurement process was something less than satisfactory.

The Australian intervention took the newbuildings away from a Vosper-Thorneycroft/ Fitzroy Engineering consortium into an Australian-concocted one. The consequences for this are still being coped with.

So it suits the United States to ensure that in the matter of the submarines that the Australian home-grown content is kept to the very minimum.

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