Claim: The Paris Economy Pact was a concern for the United States.
Evidence: The pact was of great concern to the American government, led by President Woodrow Wilson, which saw the continued fragmentation of Europe to be a risk for continued conflict. US Secretary of State Robert Lansing asked the staff of the US embassy in Paris to monitor the proceedings (the United States had not yet entered the war and was not one of the Allies). The issue of central concern to the United States was that the pact included schemes for the subsidization and the government ownership of manufacturing enterprises and the division of European markets for the pact participants. The outcome of the Economic Conference foreshadowed the conflict between the United States and the Allies during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The past concern of the US government with the pact remains fossilized in the US Code, in Title 19, Section 1332(c), which gives the United States International Trade Commission the "power to investigate the Paris Economy Pact and similar organizations and arrangements in Europe."