Cash and Carry was a policy by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced at a joint session of the United States Congress on September 21, 1939, subsequent to the outbreak of war in Europe.
It replaced the Neutrality Act of 1937, by which belligerents could purchase only nonmilitary goods from the United States as long as the recipients paid immediately in cash and assumed all risk in transportation using their own ships.
Roosevelt arranged the inclusion of the "cash and carry" clause "...as a deliberate way to assist Great Britain and France in any war against the Axis Powers, since he realized that they were the only countries that had both the hard currency and ships to make use of "cash-and-carry.
The cash and carry program stimulated U.S. manufacturing while allowing the Allied nations, particularly the United Kingdom, to purchase much needed military equipment.
[9] The "cash and carry" legislation enacted in 1939 effectively ended the arms embargo that had been in place since the Neutrality Act of 1936, and paved the way for Roosevelt's Lend-Lease program.