A term used to describe foreign policies designed to subserve US business interests. It was first applied to the policy of President Taft, whereby investments and loans, supported and secured by federal action, financed the building of railways in China after 1909. It spread to Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua, where US loans were underpinned by US forces and where a US collector of customs was installed in 1911. Although the policy was disavowed by President Woodrow Wilson, comparable acts of intervention in support of US business interests, particularly in Latin America, remained a recurrent feature of US foreign policy.