History of the United States II / Unit 8 USH2 1058 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Neutral in Trade
The idea
American exports to the Allies quadrupled in two years, from seven hundred fifty million dollars to three billion. Over the same years exports to Germany fell from three hundred fifty million dollars to thirty million, as the British blockade cut Germany off from American goods. Wilson had asked Americans to be neutral in thought and deed; the trade figures show how far the economy departed from that ideal. A country officially neutral had become the Allies' supplier.
In practice
One column rising fourfold and another falling to less than a tenth.
Where people slip
The confusion to avoid is taking official neutrality as the whole story. Policy was neutral; commerce was not. The British blockade, not American choice alone, closed the German market, but the result tied American business to an Allied victory, and that is the evidence for the economic reading of why the country entered the war.
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