Business: Strategic Metals, Critical Choices

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Of course, companies can do more to develop secondary and tertiary sources, many of which will become both economically feasible and absolutely necessary as conventional minerals become costlier in the 1980s. For example, the U.S. imports 93% of its bauxite, the major aluminum ore, but the Bureau of Mines is experimenting with a process to extract alumina from clays found in Georgia and Arkansas. More experiments, more domestic mining and some compromises on the environmental front would help avoid repetition of the oil saga of the 1960s and 1970s, when the U.S. became needlessly overdependent on dubious foreign suppliers. In an era of growing economic confrontation, increasing reliance on imported minerals creates a potentially dangerous breach in the nation's defenses.