Why US Won’t Sanction Plug Nickel Of Putin’s Mineral

WSJ’s editors took Pres Biden & war team to task for TELLING Putin “Everything America Won’t Do on Ukraine,” including no troops, no planes & no guts let alone common sense. Unsaid by Joe, they note, US is still buying Russian oil & 2 metals we can’t do without.

In “This Russia Metals Giant Might Be Too Big To Sanction,” we learn “Norilsk Nickel is a key supplier of nickel & palladium, two metals that are key for electric-vehicle batteries & semiconductors.” It’s the same kind of dependency the West has on China’s rare earth metals needed for key meds & technologies. As a result, the WSJ argues, the price of nickel & palladium have jumped skyward as if gold for fear the US & EU sanctions triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be met with a retaliatory shutdown by Putin. That also partly explains why the US is balking so far at sanctioning let alone ending its buying of Russian oil.

Of course, international buyers are “scrambling” to find alternative sources of the stuff. Yet, it begs the question why the West’s otherwise shrewd capitalists have been so naïve in letting themselves be at the mercy of Russian (or Chinese) extortion … and … what are we paying our governments who also do nothing about it, at least, until it’s too late like now?

Davd Soul