Both tariffs and embargoes fail to achieve their goals more often than they succeed, but embargoes fail less often.<p>The only saving grace for the US is the fact that it does indeed possess ample quantities of the materials being embargoed. Creating a national strategy to actually extract them, however, is almost certainly an impossibility because that will require that plans be made by experts who care about the long-term stability of the nation, plans whose durations will span multiple administrations.