From Schiff Sovereign
On June 7, 1939, US President Franklin Roosevelt signed a new law authorizing $100 million (a lot of money back then) to buy rubber, tin, tungsten, etc., and put it all in storage.
The United States was still at peace at the time. World War II had not yet broken out, and global trade was still relatively seamless.
But anyone reading a newspaper could see what was coming. Hitler had annexed Austria the year before and swallowed the rest of Czechoslovakia that March. Japan had been at war in China for two years.