Leibowitz: Trading with the Enemy?

When nations go to war, trade between them, at least in modern times, is supposed to stop. There was little complaint after Pearl Harbor, for example, about legislative and executive actions to stop all commerce between the United States on the one hand, and Germany, Italy and Japan on the other. We used to assume that these drastic measures were only employed during wartime.

It was not always so. During the Napoleonic Wars, British and French merchants continued to trade with each other and with third countries, often using neutral ships. In the U.S., Congress reacted to the British-French conflict over trade by passing the Embargo Act in 1807, costing U.S. traders big time, and not doing much to prevent British (and French) seizures of neutral ships and cargoes. Not for the first time, and not for the last, U.S. capitalists resented and resisted government attempts to tell them what to do and whom to trade with. The War of 1812 between the U.S. and Britain was largely over trading rights. The idea that warring nations should cease all contacts really blossomed in the First World War.