As we sit in the foggy aftermath of one of history's most extraordinary elections one thing is clear enough – Australia just received an enormous shot of financial adrenalin. We are accidental collateral winners from the Republican victory in the US. Call it the Trump gift and it's worth billions.

Trump's policy centrepiece to spend $1 trillion to rebuild America's infrastructure signals a massive increase in demand for commodities like iron ore and coal, which Australia produces. And since declaring he was set to "fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals", the prices of these commodities have taken off like a rocket.

The price of Iron ore – our biggest export – has soared to almost US$75 a tonne which is almost double where it was at the start of the year. In the past few days since the days it has gained more than 8 per cent.

According to Australian government's budget papers, the effect in 2017/18 of a change in the iron ore price alone is huge, with every $US10 a tonne change impacting tax receipts by $3.9 billion and nominal GDP by $13.4 billion.