> The US at this time was literally the only functioning industrialized economy left on earth. If you wanted to buy anything beyond raw materials, it came from

> The US at this time was literally the only functioning industrialized economy left on earth. If you wanted to buy anything beyond raw materials, it came from the US. Except for Australia, as manufacturing in Australia was still a thing then. And there were a few other developed nations that survived the war with their economies reasonably intact. The USA wasn't a total global monopoly. Nor was international trade as common as it is now .