U.S. Strategic and Critical Materials Imports: Dependency and Vulnerability. The Latin American Alternative.

摘要

In time of war or during a National Emergency, it will be necessary for the United States to minimize dependence on extra hemisphere supply. This paper examines the extent to which current suppliers of strategic and critical imported minerals and petroleum, received from outside the American Continent, could be superseded with Latin American sources, including the Caribbean, Central and South America. The paper concludes that this substitution of trade would be a desirable course of action now, to be pursued in peacetime, not only for the U.S. but also for the Latin American States as well. This paper lists the strategic and critical imported materials for the U.S., and also identifies current supply sources; determines to what extent current supply sources could be replaced by Latin American ones; identifies major U.S. policy changes that would be required to make new trade arrangements suitable, feasible, and acceptable; proposes conclusions, which are related to the future of the U.S. strategic stockpiling and to the improvement of the Latin American sources of supply. (JHD)