Business: Strategic Metals, Critical Choices

Worries over dependence on dubious suppliers

The rising use of trade sanctions around the world has demonstrated how economic warfare is now diplomacy by other means. Since 1973 oil producers have openly used their petroleum weapon to further their Middle East political objectives. Last year Nigeria introduced natural resources trade-offs by threatening to cut oil exports to the U.S. if the Carter Administration lifted the American boycott on chrome imports from racially troubled Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Both the possibility of other OPEC-type raw material cartels and Soviet economic retaliation against the U.S. have begun to worry the experts. Warns Harry J. Gray,...