Rhodesian chromite embargo

Embargo workaround case. Rhodesian chrome ore was uniquely high-grade — crushable directly into a steel furnace for stainless. Embargo was nominally enforced; black-market laundering through third countries was tacitly tolerated by customs.

Embargoes. There were blood diamonds in Angola back longer ago than — actually, when your parents were in diapers. Rhodesia, which is now part of Zimbabwe, just northeast of South Africa — they had the world's best chromium ore reserves. They had a civil war going on, and the world tried to put pressure on them, just like we try to put pressure on North Korea and Iran and other countries to not build nuclear weapons. Rhodesia wasn't building nuclear weapons, but it was a lot of pain and suffering for a lot of people there. So we basically said we're going to put an embargo on Rhodesian chrome. They had the best chrome ore in the world — it was so good you could basically just take that rock and crush it and throw it into your steel furnace to make stainless steel. That's how good it was. No one else had chromium that good. We used to have iron ore that good — it was called the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, and it ran out about 1948, but it was so good we could crush the rock and put it right into the blast furnace to make steel. We didn't have to process it. We had the world's cheapest iron ore in the United States, but we used it all up.