What was a chief cause of the rising prices of the 1970s?

It is not possible to point out just one cause for the price increase in the 1970s, because a set of problems was what caused this crisis.

In summary, With the end of Bretton Woods, the name given to a 1944 agreement in which 45 allied countries were present and whose objective was to govern world economic policy, the currencies of the member countries would be linked to the American currency. international monetary system suffered from the change in the value of the US dollar and the price of oil (in 1973 and 1979). They were the source of an economic crisis that, in the early 1970s, slowed down the pace of growth in industrialized countries.  The US dollar, which served as a reference for all western economies since the 1940s, was devalued on August 15, 1971, and lost its parity with gold. Two years later, in late 1973, the Arab countries members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) increased oil prices fourfold in the space of three months at a time when they were at war with Israel and nationalized the facilities western countries.

Europe enters a phase called stagflation, that is, a combination of a recession and rising inflation. As a result of this situation there are numerous bankruptcies and the crisis of the traditional industries that had been at the base of the start of the Industrial Revolution, such as the steel industry, metallurgy, textiles, automobile construction and the air transport sector threatened to fail. In the 1970s the signs of this crisis were felt on a world scale: industrial production was declining and there was a general increase in product prices.

d.he wanted to send diplomats to communist countries.