In March 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the Lend-Lease Act. The act was created to help Great Britain during World War II. Britain could not afford to continue paying cash for war aid received from the United States. This act authorized the president to sell, transfer, exchange, or lease arms and other materials to countries whose defense he believed to be vital to U.S. security. It allowed the president to give war materials to Britain under siege without demanding cash payment as required by the Neutrality Act of 1939. Isolationists such as Senator Robert Taft opposed the policy because it further involved the United States in World War II. President Roosevelt soon expanded the lend-lease program to include other Allied nations such as Brazil, China, and the Soviet Union. By the end of World War II, the United States had given $50 billion worth of lend-lease aid to more than 40 nations, most of whom never paid for this assistance. These countries gave the United States $8 billion in reverse lend-lease, a system in which Allied nations provided aid to U.S. troops stationed abroad.
