Next week, the Securities and Exchange Commission is due to finally enforce a Dodd-Frank requirement where U.S. companies ensure their use of supply chain minerals — tungsten, tin, tantalum, and gold — does not fund armed groups in Central Africa.

According to a new report from CAP’s Enough Project, a number of companies have anticipated the rule with steps toward transparency and pressuring suppliers. The report singles out Intel, Motorola, HP, and Apple as electronic industry leaders on this trend of auditing and sourcing the supply chain. While most companies have made more than 30 percent progress, Nintendo places dead-last as the only company to not take a single effort on the issue. Sharp, HTC, Nikon, and Canon, are other exceptions to the industry trend, posting less than 10 percent progress toward sourcing conflict minerals.

Essentially every electronic device — from cellphones to laptops to MP3 players — is manufactured using similar minerals, which can be smuggled from Congo and neighboring countries. The companies ranked here do not directly partner with groups guilty of murder and human rights abuse, but they do indirectly fund them through a complicated, nontransparent supply chain. Enforcing the Dodd-Frank rule is an essential step to this practice’s end, by requiring more transparency and accountability from large American companies.

Intel has emerged as a leader for making the first commitment to producing a conflict-free product by 2013, while Apple will require suppliers to use audited, conflict-free smelters. Microsoft and Motorola, both listed with 35 percent progress, split from the U.S. Chamber this spring for the Chamber’s efforts against regulation.

Most companies have made some strides toward rooting out conflict minerals, shown in the chart below with Enough’s full ranking:

When he was with Mitt Romney in Jerusalem last month, top campaign foreign policy adviser Dan Senor made a splash by saying that a Romney administration would greenlight an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Senor quickly clarified in a statement that it was Romney’s “fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures” will curb Iran’s program. Today, Senor implied those measures weren’t having the right effects on Iran.

Speaking on right-wing radio host’s Bill Bennet’s show, Senor falsely claimed that the international sanctions regime against Iran wasn’t slowing its nuclear progress. He said:

The question is: Are [sanctions] having enough effect to actually slow down the path towards a nuclear weapons capability? And there’s no evidence that it is actually slowing them down.

Listen to a clip:

Senor claim echoes one made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he appeared with Romney last month in Jerusalem. Netanyahu said, “[A]ll the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.” Those statements are directly contradicted by the United Nations. A U.N. panel last year reported that the U.N. Security Council sanctions spearheaded by the Obama administration were “constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.” A recent Pentagon report seemed to bolster this conclusion with regard to Iran’s missile capabilities. While it’s true that the pressure has not yet caused Iran to buckle, it’s simply not accurate to say the sanctions have not slowed Iran’s program.

As neoconservative analyst Patrick Clawson noted today, “[F]or the most part, Democrats and Republicans no longer show much difference when it comes to Iran policy.” That’s true — to an extent. The main difference is that the Romney camp uses a more belligerent tone, attempts to suppress public discourse about the possible consequences of a strike, and has a lower threshold for war. Senor expanded on the latter point on Bennet’s show, saying that a nuclear “capability” is “just as big a threat” as Iran developing a weapon. But that’s absurd: no one would fear a dismantled gun as much as an assembled one. What’s more, it’s not exactly clear what “capability” means. Robert Wright noted that one could “define the term so broadly that Iran already has a ‘capability’,” leaving Americans guessing as to exactly when a Romney administration would opt to start a war with Iran.

President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

By Philip Ballentine

One of Mitt Romney’s top foreign policy planks is declaring China a “currency manipulator” and fighting back with across-the-board “countervailing duties” (taxes on all Chinese imports), policies introduced in his Sept. 2011 economic policy paper and reiterated since then. Today, his vice presidential pick Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) echoed Romney’s call:

They manipulate their currency… We’re not going to let that happen. Mitt Romney and I are going to crack down on China cheating and make sure trade works for Americans.

Watch the video:

But when the House voted in Sept. 2010 for measures to crack down on Chinese currency manipulation, Ryan was among the no votes.

Ryan’s position was right before his flip-flop: declaring China a currency manipulator would open the door to slapping a tax on every shoe, children’s toy, t-shirt, iPhone, and washing machine imported from China, raising prices for every American consumer. In addition to spiking the prices of Chinese imports (worth almost $400 billion in 2011), Romney’s duties would spark a trade war with America’s third largest export market. China would almost certainly react with duties of its own on American goods. That would be a job killer for the U.S.; America exported $103.9 billion in goods and services to China in 2011, up almost 50 percent from 2008.

In fact, Ryan wasn’t the only conservative who opposed China policies like Romney’s. Among the many conservative experts (including a campaign adviser) who side against Romney, here are two prominent Republicans, unlike Ryan, haven’t flip-flopped on the issue: Read more