International Trade during Holiday Seasons

The Holiday Seasons is a time when many businesses try to beat out there competition by having the most sales. Starting around Thanksgiving and ending on New Year’s day most businesses have the most sales and make the most profit during the Holiday Seasons, for an example Wal-Mart makes a huge percentage of its profit during Thanksgiving and Christmas. International trade during the Holiday Seasons is key to success in businesses that uses imports to get there products from overseas. Once the Holiday Season starts the United States will be ordering more products and requiring more shipments from China, Asia, North and South Korea, and Europe. China is the leading import and export company that the United States does business with year round, when the Holiday Season starts many American Businesses double if not triple there shipment import from China. Out of all the Holidays during the year Christmas is the biggest of them all, mostly every Business has a Christmas sale, from clothes to toys there is a sale on just about everything. Revenues of a company’s business most likely are to go up during this time because most consumers will spent their last dollar on food and products such as Christmas trees, presents for kids, traveling arrangements and “Big Ticket Items” (Products that average consumers don’t buy all the time). Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, and New Years are the days that business wait for all year long because they know that consumers are looking for the best deals and will spend more money on these days than any other out of the year.

In the ancient days the notion of international trade was not familiar. In its place, international trade was referred to as trading activities conducted overseas or over long distances. The history of international trade shows us how trade use to take place among a variety of nations in the olden days. The history of international trade is a long one. The term has diverse connotations across history, for example in the era when The United States was not there the term international trade meant long distance. It was pretty comparable to modern day international trade, which is a kind of movement in merchandise.

International trade stared long ago, According to Periplus Maris Erythraei, which is a Greek travel manuscript, written in the 1^st century there used to be broad trade among Romans and Indians. Also the Egyptians carried out wide-ranging trading actions in the Red Sea. They imported spices from Arabia. Arabian nomads carried out extended distance trading activities with the assists of camels. Sometimes this type of thing would take weeks to transport. They traded silk and cooking spices to the East.  This type of trading took place all the time, way before international trade was “International Trade”.

The history of international trade is exactly that, history. Even though international trade it lives on, it is now more advanced, and it is one of the tools we need to keep our economy and counties afloat. International trade is now the exchange of capital goods and services across global borders or territories. In nearly all countries, it represents a major share of gross domestic product. While at the same time international trade has been in attendance throughout a great deal of history.

Before the September 11 attacks, the U.S. trade deficit was contracting by July, 2001, shrinking demand for foreign materials and foreign finished goods. American steel companies have ridden a wave of patriotism and used Washington, D.C contacts to convince Bush administration to protect American steel with tariffs of up to 40 percent. According to several trade analysts, “these tariffs are sure to anger European and Asian steel producers and lead to a dramatic drop in exports of steel and other raw materials to the United States.”

U.S. companies have been forced to rethink their inventory methods because they may no longer work if global shipping continues to be slowed by tight security regulations. The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s were the days when foreign companies bought Rockefeller Center, Hollywood was making movies about scary Japanese bosses and some Americans worried that trade was destroying their jobs. In that recession period American imports stagnated, rebounding only when the mid-1990s economic boom kicked in. Trade experts expect imports to remain weak for a while, a development that may damage many foreign nations economic health. Growth in trade has undergone one of the most severe decelerations in modern times. Some and analysts predict weak demand for imported retail goods through the middle of 2002. Businesses that offer alternatives to higher priced goods will do well. If you work for a company that sells merchandise or services at prices lower than competitors, you’re going to be in better shape than the “high end” stores. When the economy starts to slow, people start looking around for ways to cut back on expenses, and they give up the frivolous items in favor of the basics. Some examples would include food, health care, personal care, funeral homes and things in that nature People always need these needs to make it and survive in the world. In a recession there’s a shortage of capital but an abundance of labor. You don’t want to be in a competition with most minimum capital needed by other businesses, nor do you want to be looking for employment in a field where there are many employers.

International trade is a major source of economic revenue for any nation that is considered to be a world power. International trade is the reason countries like the United States is the most-powered countries in the world due to the reason that we specialize in imports and are very good in exports, also. In the present outlook of time in international trade, the U.S dollar and the Euro are the most sought-after currency in the world. With international trade, there can be some backlash in the form called an embargo which is a blockade of all trade by one country on another. With that said, the United States has had an embargo on Cuba for the past 40 years. In recent news, President Obama has reached out to the Indian prime minister expressing interest in trading with India due to their civilian nuclear energy and technology. President Obama figures that this can be a good move for the United States that so it might create more jobs for the future. President Obama is also trying to get the U.S in to interact with East and Southeast Asia so it can possibly form an Asia-pacific free trade zone. In a negative aspect, Obama slapped tariffs on all car and light truck tires to China back in September which in turn could mess up our relationship with a quickly-growing economy. Recent studies show that the recession is coming to an end making the consumers start to trust the economy.

In Conclusion, International Trade during the Holiday Seasons is an important part to a lot of businesses. In the graph it shows “these past years brought a big surge of traffic into retail stores, but not enough to make up for the lack of sales throughout the holiday season”, this recession that we are in has taking its toll on the Holiday Seasons profit Retailers are having a difficult time during the Holiday Season over the past couple of years although online sales seems to be increasing in revenue, recent studies shows “online retail spending has grown more than $22 billion between Nov. 1 and Dec. 14, which marks an 18% climb” showing that sales during this time of the year online sales has increased since the September 11 attack. “Although there was a decline in the year-over-year number from January 2006 to mid-2007, the number has been increasing of late. Some of that is probably due to lower year on year comparisons and price inflation”, consumer are becoming pessimistic about the market which could explain why the Holiday sales has decreased over the years. Some of the reasons why the market is like this is because “The housing market is a mess, the economy has plenty of bumps in it, energy and food prices are high” which causes consumers to cut back on expenses, however expects predict “holiday sales to increase only 1.8% this year, the lowest forecast in over 10 years, Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group says”.

Bibliography

The Studies in the Theory of International Trade, book by  Jacob Viner (1892-1970)

A Brief History of International Trade Policy, Article BY Irwin A. Douglas

Notes from class power point

 

Source- The government industry website and bnet.com