Foreign or international trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories. Without international trade, nations would be limited to the goods and services produced within their own borders. Hence, increasing international trading is crucial to the continuance of globalization.

It is interesting to explore the most popular world trading partners of the United States. Examining the numbers behind a country’s trading relationships sheds light on the extent of economic interdependence between nations.

Let us take a look at the listing of the current top world trade partners of the United States. The data in this report is year-to-date and comes from the US Census Bureau. It represents the total trade of goods – both imports and exports – from January 2014 through July 2014.

1. Canada – Many are surprised to discover that the country’s top world trading partner is none other than our neighbor to the north – Canada.

Total Trade: $381.1 billion

Percent of Total US Trade: 16.7%

US Exports: $180.6 billion

US Imports: $200.5 billion

Trade Gap: $19.9 billion

2. China

Total: $322 billion

Percent of Total US: 14.1%

US Exports: $68 billion

US Imports: $254 billion

Gap: $186 billion

3. Mexico

Total: $308.2 billion

Percent of Total US: 13.5%

US Exports: $139.1 billion

US Imports: $169.1 billion

Gap: $30 billion

4. Japan:

Total: $116.8 billion

Percent of Total US: 5.1%

US Exports: $38.8 billion

US Imports: $78 billion

Gap: $39.2 billion

5. Germany

Total: $99.6 billion

Percent of Total US: 4.4%

US Exports: $29.4 billion

US Imports: $70.2 billion

Gap: $40.8 billion

6. South Korea

Total: $66.2 billion

Percent of Total US: 2.9%

US Exports: $26.4 billion

US Imports: $39.8 billion

Gap: $13.4 billion

7. United Kingdom

Total: $62.7 billion

Percent of Total US: 2.7%

US Exports: $31 billion

US Imports: $31.7 billion

Gap: $0.7 billion

8. France

Total: $46.2 billion

Percent of Total US: 2%

US Exports: $18.4 billion

US Imports: $27.8 billion

Gap: $9.4 billion

9. Saudi Arabia

Total: $42.7 billion

Percent of Total US: 1.9%

US Exports: $10.4 billion

US Imports: $32.3 billion

Gap: $21.9 billion

10. Brazil

Total: $41.8 billion

Percent of Total US: 1.8%

US Exports: $24.9 billion

US Imports: $16.9 billion

Gap: $8 billion (in US favor)

It is interesting to note that in this period, the top 10 countries represent approximately 73.2% of the $2.3 trillion in total US foreign trade, with a total trade gap of $369.9 billion (the value that imports exceed exports) overall. Out of the 10 biggest trading partners, only one have trade gap in the United States’ favor (meaning that the US exports have been greater than the imports).

Based on the above data, we also observe some specifics about the US top trading partners such as:

1. Top 5 Countries Receiving U.S. Exports (in descending order)

– Canada, Mexico, China, South Korea and Japan

2. Top 5 Countries Supplying U.S. Imports(in descending order)

– China, Canada, Mexico, Japan and Germany

From the statistics seen above, it is evident that foreign trade is an important component of any economy, generally accounting for a significant share of gross domestic product (GDP). Here the trade is mostly restricted to trade in goods and services rather than trade in capital, labor or other factors of production. This is because international trade is costlier than domestic trade due to the additional costs like tariffs, border delays or country differences such the legal system or culture.

This is where the international trade (and traders) of the US is largely dependent on “logistics” companies which encompass the distribution, transportation and inventory management sections of the international demand-supply chain.

Many logistics companies provide a one-stop solution for global transportation by offering a single or any combination of shipping methods that gets the cargoes where they need to go in the most time and cost-effective manner possible. Through their consulting services, the company also helps its clients to overcome the specific challenges that the trader faces by formulating customized long-term logistical plans to maximize time and budget.

Often, purchasing and procurement services can be expensive for business corporations to handle “in house”. A good company will go that extra mile by offering complete procurement services along with supply chain management services. Such a feature provides greater relief to the traders; they don’t have to worry about the selecting the right vendor (in terms of reliability or geographical position) or the quality of raw materials. So, whether your company needs to purchase wholesale computer parts, home and garden equipment or consumer electronics and handles the freight from door to door.

Along with the promise of worry-free end-to-end transportation services, these companies also provide attractive discounts on import and export products from time to time.

It is the presupposition of international trade that a sufficient level of geopolitical peace and stability are prevailing in order to allow for the peaceful exchange of trade and commerce to take place between nations.

Source by T. Gil

Over the past few years, to say social media has exploded would be an understatement. Members of social media sites have discovered it’s the easiest way to find, learn about, and share information that directly influences their purchasing decisions. It is this reason alone that every business should be on multiple social media sites in an effort to reach as many people as possible.

Below are the top 11 reasons to use social media in business:

1. Build relationships – personal and professional; connect with all types of people – past and present coworkers, current clients, prospects, vendors, competitors, and marketing professionals to build your network
2. Share information – share your blog posts; share interesting and useful articles, other blogs, webinars, podcasts, presentations, and poll/survey results with your fan base
3. Gather valuable information – research similar products/services, competitors, prospects, marketing tips, blog ideas, create your own poll/survey – the amount of information available is endless
4. Join a social network of like-minded individuals or start a new interest group where you can further brand your product/service, build relationships, and share ideas and information
5. Stay current with the latest trends – write a blog or join a discussion on a trending topic; become aware of new social media sites that might fit the needs of your business
6. Land a great new job – using your new connections on various social media sites, you can get the inside scoop on companies that are hiring, as well as resume and interview tips
7. Discover a new passion in life, become a volunteer, or start a fundraising event
8. Get found by prospects by using inbound marketing tactics – spread the word about your product/service through social media sites; to form a complete marketing plan, combine this with outbound techniques (interruptive marketing)
9. Build business reputation and brand – constantly add value to all your posts and become a trustworthy leader in your industry; to quote Bob Burg, “All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust.”
10. Build a marketing department inexpensively – for start-ups, employing inbound marketing tactics is a cheap way to start marketing your product/service; most social media sites are free to join, while others have a minimal monthly or yearly fee
11. Help increase conversion rates – use social media and inbound marketing to steer more organic traffic to your website and convert more leads into sales; the average conversion rate is 2.3%, but varies by industries according to ClickZ, Marketing News & Expert Advice, http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1691779/benchmarking-average-conversion-rate.

I recommend choosing a handful of sites to manage and start getting your feet wet. Not every social media site available will be right for you or your business and it would overwhelming to try them all. For example, consistently maintaining a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ pages, a YouTube channel, as well as a Twitter account might be a great place to start. Depending on the type of business, a Pinterest, Tumblr, or Flickr account might or might not be worthwhile, but obviously they are great certain brands.

If you need help getting started, there are countless different types of resources. I have used the An Hour a Day book series on Facebook Marketing, Twitter Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. They address each entity in a step-by-step fashion that is very user-friendly. I also find Hubspot to be extremely helpful. They are continually publishing user guides that contain valuable information, tips, and tricks. Lastly, when creating your profile on the various social media sites that best fit your marketing plan, it’s a good idea to connect with other marketers to check out what they are doing to boost business.

Do you have a tip or trick to share with newcomers to social media? Share it with us; you are more than welcome to post questions and/or comments here!

Source by Jennifer Daugherty

With search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, the hunt for the elusive one-way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In the end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links.
Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. Why? Perhaps because the five major effective strategies involve a certain amount of hard work, and for many people, SEO is an endless magic bean hunt. So, before looking at those five most effective strategies, let's look at some of the supposedly easier alternatives.

• Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down the line. If you think this will work, let's just say I admire your ability to maintain a childlike innocence since all the mean names I'm sure everyone calls you.
• Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into the great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.
• Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your venders in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply line.)

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will ever get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you can not rely on them, for two reasons:

1. Unfortunately, "eventually" can be a very long time.
2. There is a vicious cycle: you can not get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating the link-dampening aspirations of Google and the rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

• You need to have more than one website. Stop laughing! There really are businesses that only have one website! In fact, they may be your clients someday.
• The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process can not be automated to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.
• As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that the links are mostly on "Resources" pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any "Resource" page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that has not happened already.

3. Submitting for Incoming Links

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, non-corrupt and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO friend tells me he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites which owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche directories – now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has become big business. Buying good traffic-generating "clean" links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

1. The cost of the hundreds of links required for primary search engine traffic can become prohibitive.
2. As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link – you are essentially renting rather than owning, with no "link equity" building up.
3. Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on rankings, as disclosed in various patent filings.
4. Given Google's mission to dampen paid links' effectiveness, paid link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid link partner is "passing PageRank." But identifying appropriate PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.
5. Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of any "artificial" linking campaign. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your links are "artificial," since the vast majority of web pages (note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1 Egypt lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have so little impact on a site's PageRank that it would not be worth the expense.

5. Distributing Content
All of the above four inbound-link-generating methods really do work. But it is the fifth method of getting one-way inbound links that is the most promising: distributing content

The idea is simple: you give other websites content to put on their sites in exchange for a link to your site, usually in an "author's resource box," an "about the author" paragraph at the end of the article.

The beauty of distributing content for links is that the links generally generate more traffic than links on a "resources" page. Plus, your article will pre-sell readers on the value of your site.

The downside, of course, is that it's no small amount of work to create original content and then distribute it to hundreds of website owners. But nothing good ever came easy. And on the internet, one-way inbound links are a very good thing.

In conclusion, there are a number of ways of getting one-way inbound links, and if you're smart, you'll use all of them.

Source by Joel Walsh