In order to remedy this situation, Roosevelt on December 8, 1940, proposed the concept of lend-lease, and the U.S. Congress passed his Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. This legislation gave the president the authority to aid any nation whose defense he believed vital to the United States and to accept repayment “in kind or property, or any other direct or indirect benefit which the President deems satisfactory.” Though lend-lease had been authorized primarily in an effort to aid Britain, it was extended to China in April and to the Soviet Union in September. The principal recipients of aid were the British Commonwealth countries (about 63 percent) and the Soviet Union (about 22 percent), though by the end of the war more than 40 countries had received lend-lease help. Much of the aid, valued at $49.1 billion, amounted to outright gifts. Some of the cost of the lend-lease program was offset by so-called reverse lend-lease, under which Allied nations gave U.S. troops stationed abroad