- However, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932, this long held isolationist policy finally changed. He signed the Reciprocal Trade Agreement in 1934, allowing the President to reduce tariffs. President Roosevelt had been a member of Wilson’s cabinet back in 1913, and in later years he had firmly believed that the USA should join the League of Nations.
- Roosevelt’s earlier years of presidency were …show more content…
- The Neutrality Act of 1936 was designed to protect American citizens out of peril by forbidding them to travel on the ships of warring nations. More than 100 Americans were killed when a German submarine torpedoed the Lusitania in 1915. Additionally, the 1936 Act renewed the law of the previous year with the additional restriction that no loans could be made to belligerent nations. Americans were not permitted to travel on the ships of nations as war. The 1936 Act also had the effect of denying the use of United States ports to the warships of belligerent nations.
- The Neutrality Act of 1937 limited the trade of even non-munitions to belligerent nations to a “cash and carry basis.” What this meant was that the nation in question would have to use its own ships in order to transport goods to avoid American entanglement in the war. The 1937 Act made the Neutrality Act permanent. The isolationists in congress were confident that these measures would keep America from getting involved in another