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“Yes, I have a hard time believing the leaders of our country have allowed the US to become dependent on anything. How long ago did these contract for strategic minerals become a reality?? and why??”

We have gradually allowed our strategic stockpiles of critical materials to dwindle, in some cases to nothing. Case in point, in the late 1950s, the US government owned 10 billion ounces of silver. Now, the mint occasionally stops production of Silver Eagles because, by law, they all have to be produced using US-sourced silver...and they don’t have any until the next shipment from a refiner.

I think that the reasoning was/is that we will never have another WW2 situation, where the US is the Arsenal of Democracy in a multi-year war in which production is as much of a weapon as guns, planes and ships - because everything will quickly go nuclear, and we’ll have to fight with forces in place. Personally, I think that this is a very, very short-sighted policy. We need to rebuild these stocks, because we simply cannot know what will occur in the future - and, besides, if we do have large stocks of critical materials (and a very robust military production base of factories, equipment and skilled labor), then the odds of anyone starting up with us will drop - considerably.