all right this is openstax u.s history chapter 22 section 5 taft's dollar diplomacy so we've got a very very very brief section here and that of course is the foreign policy of william howard taft it kind of just serves as a bridge when talking about american foreign policy because you had uh theodore roosevelt who of course was so instrumental in doing things like constructing the panama canal uh taft is the president after him and then you know beyond that is woodrow wilson and woodrow wilson is known especially for us involvement in world war one oops too many w's world war one right so taft this chapter is going to talk very very quickly about what his foreign policy was to have to use something that was known as dollar diplomacy which is a foreign policy much more based off of economics more so than military so whereas before we saw instances like the spanish-american war lead to more acquisitions taft really is trying to shy away from that and use more of the economics on it one way that he wants to do this uh central america is one target asia is also another target of tafs spreading american influence through the economy is to get nations to become indebted to the u.s so that is by other nations debt oops so they are [Music] indebted so they owe those debts to the u.s right so once those nations like those nations in central america once they are now in debt to the u.s because the u.s controls those debts it can further control those nations as opposed to let's say that nation owing money to germany owing money to france owing money to great britain it's also a way to get rid of that influence and to only have more american influence this was successful in the western hemisphere right so this is oust european economic control of the western hemisphere and certainly by world war 1 which is 1914 the us has pretty firm control over the western hemisphere you know really countries like great britain france and germany they're really looking other places other than you know central and south america to exert their influence and places like asia the us was less successful you still have countries like russia and japan which are more successful there that's not to say the us didn't try to get more control into asia but it really was in central and south america which the united states was much more effective now this era of imperialism comes to an end when world war one or the great war breaks out and we have an entire chapter dedicated to that 1914 europe goes to war and in 1917 the united states goes to war so again just a very quick point about taft how he fits into this uh question about u.s foreign policy in this era