The U.S economy was so important to the world economy in the 1920's... why?

Question

I was reading a book about the world economy and it said the u.s. economy was so important to it. why? just curious.

Answer 1

Long story short, food.

In 1913, Germany, for example, produced enough food to feed 40 million people, while its actual population was 67 million, so it imported over ten million tons of food a year. Other European countries were in a similar position, as their soils were depleted by many centuries of cultivation and their adoption of machinery and mineral fertilizers was relatively slow. So for a while, the U.S., along with Canada, Australia, and Argentina, provided the food that Europe and Asia needed, but could not produce...

The situation changed by 1950, when Western Europe caught up with the U.S. in the use of machinery and fertilizers. Since then, machinery, fertilizers, and high-quality seeds have been increasingly adopted worldwide, leading to consistent increases in global per-capita food production...

Answer 2

In the early to mid 1920's, America was a growing economic powerhouse, and it had avoided being destroyed by WW1. France had had some of its most productive areas become battlefields, and after the war, the German economy was crippled by draconian reparations requirements. Britain, France and Germany had lost a large number of their young men in the war, and in addition, they had borrowed heavily to support it.
So, with the traditional heart of European manufacturing either ruined or suffering under immense economic pressure, and Britain piling up debt, there was no one else to keep the world economy going. By the 1920's, the U.S. had a significant economic base, and could ramp to support more of the world demand for manufactured goods.
The opposite side of the coin to this is that, when America got the flu, everyone else did too. In the 1920's, the economy expanded rapidly, depending on commercial debt to fund it's growth. Once the expansion slowed, it was difficult for people to service their debt, and they defaulted. This massive wave of defaults caused banks to cease making loans, and their resulted in a credit crunch and overall deflation.
Due to bad policy decisions and the importance of the U.S. on the world economic stage, this depression spread and became world-wide by the 1930's.
So I guess you could say that the U.S. economy was important both due to its size and the impact it had when it ran into difficulties in the late 1920's.

Answer 3

Because most of the European powers involved in WWI shipped their gold holdings to the US for safekeeping.

This caused a liquidity boom throughout the 1920s.

Answer 4

William has a good answer.