Imports and Exports are two opposite methods of international trading. An Import is described in trade as being ‘a service or goods brought into a country from abroad for sale or trade’. An Export is described as being ‘a service or goods produced in one country that are sent to another for sale or trade’. In essence, one county's import is always another country's export. An example of an export is Japanese cars that are sent from Japan (exported) to other countries around the world so that they can be sold internationally. An example of an import is bananas. Most countries throughout the world do not have the climate to grow this fruit as it requires a lot of heat and light to grow. Although many countries throughout the world have bananas in their supermarkets, these will usually have been imported from another country where the climate is right for them to grow. In a perfect model, for a country to maintain economic growth, they need to be exporting goods to the same value (or higher) than they are importing. In the same way that a shop should sell its produce at a higher value than it spends purchasing stock, or it will not make any money. In times of economic downturn, such as in the past few years, a much higher emphasis has been put on making the most of what a country exports as this means that the country will be making money internationally and not just using the money that is already in the country. Another recent example of attitudes to imports and exports is that fact that green groups would like to see fewer imported goods in our supermarkets as this saves on fuel of the transportation of goods and means that the goods (especially fresh ones) will spend less time in transit and will therefore last longer in your pantry.
