This is a question has been bothering me as someone who’s country was colonized by the British Empire. We were taught about it in schools and how it lost power over time but never how the USA came to take its place especially over such a short compared to the British Empire.
Post WWII the US had massive increases in economic power by exporting a lot of stuff made with our wartime factories as a starting point. The US also is bigger and had a comparable population to Europe, massive amounts of natural resources, and a culture of economic growth and expansion to rival any of the other colonial powers at their peak.
We built on previous empires and went with economics and soft power instead of directly colonizing.