Hiroshima/Canberra | Australian mining and energy companies could get expanded access to billions of dollars worth of subsidies from US President Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, under deals to grant special status to the country’s defence manufacturing and critical minerals industries.

The plans were announced after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met Mr Biden on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, where the leaders of the leading industrialised economies united to condemn Chinese economic coercion and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.