Between 1890 and 1914, the United States acquired overseas colonies, built a battleship fleet, and intervened increasingly often in Latin America and East Asia. This activism is often seen as the precursor to the country's role as a superpower after 1945 but actually served very different goals. In contrast to its pursuit of a relatively liberal international economic order after 1945, the
United States remained committed to trade protection before 1914. Protectionism had several
important consequences for American foreign policy on both economic and security issues. It led
to a focus on less-developed areas of the world that would not export manufactured goods to the
United States instead of on wealthier European markets. It limited the tactics available for promoting American exports, forcing policymakers to seek exclusive bilateral agreements or unilateral concessions from trading partners instead of multilateral arrangements. It inhibited
political cooperation with other major powers and implied an aggressive posture toward these
states. The differences between this foreign policy and the one the United States adopted after
1945 underscore the critical importance not just of the search for overseas markets but also of
efforts to protect the domestic market.