Paul F. Dietz wrote:
I repeat: if shortage of refining capacity for titanium in the US had
been the showstopper for an otherwise greatly superior material, that
capacity would have been added. The laws of physics and chemistry
don't
suddenly change at the US border.

Your point is only applicable to an extreme situation and trivializes
the effort involved. It's kind of like saying, "If the US needed to put
10,000 tons in orbit in a couple of years, the challenges are not
insurmountable." Well, the engineering and physics do not present
insurmountable problems, but there's more to launching a lot of payload
suddenly (or refining titanium) than just physics.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer