And Britain blockaded German ports, but they expected American ships to supply them, while not allowing those same American ships to supply Germany, even though we were technically “neutral”.
But of course, we were ever neutral, since we were relying on the Royal Navy to pick up the slack in the Atlantic while we were beefing up our Pacific presence, since we gained Hawaii and The Philippines in the Spanish-American War, which even then was putting us on a collision course with Imperial Japan.
And the British were more than ready to sink US ships (we were neutral) headed into German ports.
We did allow the Germans to come trade if they could get here, though.