Though history may not repeat itself exactly, there were some interesting echoes in the 1970s of the struggle against foreign combinations of raw materials in the 1920s. As Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover fought the cartel-like price-fixing of rubber, potash, sisal, and even coffee. Then, as now, the world's most affluent industrial nation represented the political economy of expansion. Real growth was the key to stability and social progress at home, to power abroad, and growth was seen as depending to some extent on access to, and competitive markets in, key raw materials. But in the 1920s, America was not yet confronted by a rival economic superpower such as Japan of the 1970s and 1980s.

Conditioned by a heritage of limitless resources and productive ingenuity, Americans tended to assume a mastery of their own fate. They seemed unwilling to face the nation's growing dependence on various foreign supplies and on an effective functioning of the international economy. Yet, some policy makers even in the 1920s did perceive dangers that would become an overriding national concern by the 1970s.

It was a crisis long in the making, traceable to America's mass production industries. In the 1920s, the automobile industry, in particular, seemed threatened by foreign restrictions of the rubber supply and sharply rising rubber prices.