China may just look around and find it has its own Iron ore! gee really.
Belly,
Yet another flippant leftie quip ! Do you not know that Japan has been stockpiling all the coal bought from Australia for the past 30 years ? They even designed & built special ore carriers which deposit the coal in the shallows of the coast for retrieval when needed in years to come. I'd bet to think that the Chinese are just as clever to do the same with iron ore. Just because our Union hangers-on don't have such pragmatism & foresight doesn't mean the intelligent Asian don't have it either. Very much on the contrary.

Indy you do have your self on old mate.
China for the present is buying our iron and will pay the tax's on it, not Australian consumers.
Face it how will you explain Labors return? its victory, will you say voters got it wrong?
I laugh at the claims I am blind to other than my party's views,, you give evidence it is you and others who throw that stone who are,, lefty?
Mate it is the extreme right the Abbott family who threaten this country's future.

Mikk>>Any price effect of the mining tax would be felt first and foremost by China and Japan.

This is exactly why I said, 'tax the eggs, not the chickens'.

Put a tax on the minerals, not the miners, the job creators.

Wobbles>>Beyond all the hysteria about Mining profits being "under serious threat" by making some huge transnational companies pay a fair amount of tax in Australia

They already pay profit based tax, it's called company tax.

Far to many jobs are at risk by taxing the job creators.

Labor has stuffed this country, not the miners, coles or wollies.

Belly,
you're missing the point. I wasn't talking about Lib/Lab politics here. I was drawing attention to the short sightedness of the "want profit now" brigade. That encompasses all political parties, Labor in particular. May I suggest we have chook raffles before the election, one run by Julia & one by Tony. That would give us a clearer picture of their economic competence & integrity.

Something that will not differentiate either in the chook raffle is the chook will probably be one bred in an overcrowded environment, possibly genetically modified or fed GMO, possibly given antibiotics or hormones and will no doubt be foreign owned or an import. :)

To the original question...

It's basic economics...

Supply stays the same,
Demand stays the same,
Price stays the same...

Like the GST, the market will decide the prices, not the tax.

Woolies and Coles may well try to pass on the tax to consumers, but in reality little will be affected apart from their profits.

Mining giants will still take massive profits out of Australia, they just won't be as massive because they're contributing to the Australian Government like all other entities making a profit in this country.

To insist jobs will be lost etc is to believe the spin of the mining companies...