Real history question- did Congress play any role in FDR’s sanctions on Japan?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
or did FDR enact all of the embargoes and asset freezing orders through executive orders and the actions of executive departments?

Did members of Congress question any of his embargo-related measures in advance? Or in retrospect?
 

jlckansas

Most everything that was anti Japan was supported by the China lobby in the Congress. Once Japan attacked China the US backed the Chinese with everything short of an actual Declaration of War.
 

Dorknought

My understanding is that at cabinet level, it was decided to put pressure on Japan by limiting oil shipments. At this meeting it was acknowledged that cutting oil would cause war. Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson creatively interpreted the instructions to cut the oil shipments. When it was realised that supplies to Japan had been cut it was felt that opening them up again would send the wrong message as a back down. Now on the conveyor belt to war, when the Japanese invasion fleets were on their way south, Roosevelt was going to ask Congress to declare Armed Neutrality from Monday Dec 8th, similar to what was active in the Atlantic. That Japan was about to attack was obvious but the US leadership expected attacks on US ships in China, not as far away as Hawaii
 

HARRY

There doesn't seem to be any executive order by FDR for a Japanese embargo in the list of FDR's E.O.s on Wikipedia so I guess it when the usual route of a bill through Congress and the Senate with his support. Trump can use any E.O. to place sanctions on a country because of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1970, which replaced the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917 they are basically the same except that there doesn't need to be a war declared. https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/where-does-trump-get-power-reimpose-sanctions
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
This has been very informative. Thanks. One thing that strikes me is that the ultimate step, the last straw that led to Japan thinking a move south was urgent, the measures of summer 1941, were entirely in the executive branch. I mean if they were as @Dorknought described implemented by lower level executive departments (Treasury) without explicit Cabinet orders, I doubt Congress was any better informed or consulted than the Cabinet on the details.
 

Dorknought

Yes, basically the China supporters in the US Government didn’t believe that the Japanese would attack the US and have to backdown.
In the summer of 1941, before leaving for Placentia Bay, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ordered a freeze on Japanese assets. That measure required the Japanese to seek and obtain licenses to export and pay for each shipment of goods from the United States, including oil.

This move was most distressing to the Japanese because they were dependent on the United States for most of their crude oil and refined petroleum products. However, Roosevelt did not want to trigger a war with Japan. His intention was to keep the oil flowing by continuing to grant licenses.

Roosevelt had a noose around Japan’s neck, but he chose not to tighten it. He was not ready to cut off its oil lifeline for fear that such a move would be regarded as tantamount to an act of war.

That summer, while Roosevelt, his trusted adviser Harry Hopkins and U.S. Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles were attending the shipboard conference off Newfoundland and Secretary of State Cordell Hull was on vacation at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, the authority to grant licenses to export and pay for oil and other goods was in the hands of a three-person interagency committee.

It was dominated by Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whom one historian described as the “quintessential opportunist of U.S. foreign policy in 1941.”

Oil as a weapon
Acheson favored a “bullet-proof freeze” on oil shipments to Japan, claiming it would not provoke war because “no rational Japanese could believe that an attack on us could result in anything but disaster for his country.”

With breathtaking confidence in his own judgment, and ignoring the objections of others in the State Department, Acheson refused to grant licenses to Japan to pay for goods in dollars. That effectively ended Japan’s ability to ship oil and all other goods from the United States.

Acheson’s actions cut off all American trade with Japan. When Roosevelt returned, he decided not to overturn the “state of affairs” initiated by Acheson, apparently because he feared he would otherwise be regarded as an appeaser.

Once Roosevelt perpetuated Acheson’s trade embargo, the planners in Japan’s imperial military headquarters knew that oil to fuel their fleet, as well as rubber, rice and other vital reserves, would soon run out.
Click to expand...
https://www.theglobalist.com/day-lives-infamy-december-7-1941/
 

David T

Even though Congress was not directly involved in FDR's July 1941 decision for sanctions on Japan, there does not seem to have been much congressional opposition to it. In fact, the actions (which it must be remembered were provoked by Japan's insisting on bases in southern Indochina, portending a further southward drive) don't seem to have been nearly as controversial as some of the steps FDR took against Germany. As Richard Leopold writes in The Growth of American Foreign Policy, pp. 586-7:

"After June 22, 1941, Roosevelt felt freer to stand firm in Asia. The invasion of Russia took some pressure off England and exposed some strains in the Tripartite Pact. In March, Hitler had been unable to persuade Japan to attack Singapore and unwilling to reveal his own plans. On April 13 Matsuoka signed in Moscow a five-year neutrality treaty that outraged the Nazis, displeased his own government, and contributed to his downfall. Yet this disunity did not preclude a Japanese ultimatum to France on July 12 demanding the right to occupy airfields in southern Indochina and to use Saigon harbor and Camranh Bay for their fleet. Unlike the concessions obtained in June, 1940, these sites could not be justified as vital to the blockade of Chiang Kai-shek. They portended rather a drive south against the Anglo-Dutch possessions.

"This new advance spurred Roosevelt and Hull into action. On July 24, 1941, the President proposed that the United States, England, Japan, and the Netherlands agree to keep hands off Indochina, but the suggestion was not seriously considered. On July 25 the commanders at Hawaii and other Pacific outposts were told that economic sanctions were imminent and that they should take "appropriate precautionary measures." That same day Douglas MacArthur was recalled to active duty and placed in charge of a new Far Eastern force. On July 26 an executive order froze Japanese assets in America, subjected Japanese commercial transactions to government control, and barred Japanese vessels from the Panama Canal. Oil exports were drastically curtailed, and a total ban seemed likely.

"Such was the climax to the trade restrictions begun in June, 1938. Roosevelt's advisers were split. Some felt economic retaliation to be the sole weapon the United States could wield in the Pacific while it was preoccupied in the Atlantic. Others feared that so sweeping an embargo might precipitate the clash it was designed to avert. Public and congressional opinion were overwhelmingly favorable. There were almost no complaints of executive usurpation or warmongering. [my emphasis--DT] The President knew that the step involved some risk, but he believed that Japan could be checked for a little more time by economic pressure. He was eager to win that respite, since he shared MacArthur's view that the Philippines, long considered indefensible, could now repel a Japanese assault if they had a requisite number of the new type of heavy bombers..."

https://archive.org/details/growthofamerican00inleop/page/586
 

Carl Schwamberger

Public and congressional opinion were overwhelmingly favorable. There were almost no complaints of executive usurpation or warmongering.
Click to expand...

One of the misunderstood aspects of US isolationism of that era is it extended to Europe, but much less so to the Latin Americas and Asia. In 1923 the US refused to support France enforcement of the Treaty of Versialles, the Ruhr occupation. But in 1927 there was no problem sending a expeditionary brigade to Shanghai to prevent the Chinese KMT governments army from occupying that city.
 
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raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
What if the Roosevelt Administration froze Japanese assets and embargoed oil for Japan the day after the 6 month notice of the trade treaty was was up, so January 1940. It doesn't sound like Congress would have raised a peep.

The US industries would have lost export orders to Japan, but Allied purchases would probably pick up the slack. So maybe less rise in net demand and price during 1940 and less boost for the economy.

Meanwhile, what's Japan doing? Trying to negotiate an end to the embargo I guess. Making military-naval contingency plans. Probably trying to accelerate talks to reach a Soviet-Japanese neutrality agreement.
 
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