WI: US embargo on Germany during WW1

BigBlueBox

Banned
Let's say that Germany angers the US even more than OTL during the early days of WW1, leading to a total US embargo on Germany. Would this reduce the necessity of the British blockade on Germany? If so, could the Royal Navy have been put to better use elsewhere?
 
Rather rapidly the flow of US goods and materials to Germany was reduced to next to nothing, although some was sent via third parties for a while, and there were the two voyages of the merchant submarine Deutschland in 1916. There were US loans to Germany, just like to France, Britain and others, but the amount of US loans to Germany was miniscule compared to what went to the Entente. Functionally an actual embargo would not make a great deal of difference, and the RN would still need to have the blockade to prevent other neutrals from providing cargoes to Germany either directly or through Holland, Norway, Italy (for a while), etc. While the USA was not terribly neutral from the start and became less so with the passage of time, to declare and embargo on Germany but not on the UK/France would be tantamount to becoming a co-belligerent and would be politically unacceptable in the USA.

The 1930s neutrality laws which restricted sales of certain goods to both sides in a conflict, and the use of US ships to carry certain goods in war zones, while designed to be "neutral", in reality were more painful for Germany then the UK as Germany had no way to provide ships to carry cargoes that were allowed, nor the ability to get those ships past the blockade.
 
Top