The United States imports more than $1.2 trillion price of goods and services each year. These products or services vary from high-tech equipment to luxury products to more mundane domestic goods and originate in more than a hundred and fifty countries. The import market is huge, so you should be easily able to find a place in it for your goods!
Why Such a big Business?
The imports market is staggeringly big for a country with a population of just about 310 million people. There are some factors for this that might be useful to companies thinking of joining the market. First of all, many imported goods are not locally available, like bananas. Second, some kinds of goods, particularly luxurious items like caviar, champagne, French perfume, or German luxury vehicles, have a cachet that the locally-produced equivalent may have. Lastly, many imported products, such as electronics or clothing, are cheaper when made elsewhere.
Top Import Partners
While US imports originate from a variety of places, the market is taken over by several countries. A little more than 18% of all US imports come from China. The next greatest amount of imports comes from Canada, with 14.8%, then Japan, Mexico and Germany. In fact, the top 15 US imports partners handle nearly 75% of imports market. Including countries like South Korea, the united kingdom, Nigeria, Taiwan,Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, India, and others that make a number of items.
Major Import Products
The US imports a number of products, including everything from food items to clothes and vehicles to pcs. The biggest import is raw oil, which makes up a whopping 16.3% of the US imports and is the major contribution of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Some other important items include passenger cars, mats to make medicines, computers and computer accessories, cotton clothing, cell phones and some other telecommunications equipment, and TVs and DVD players.
Import Businesses
While the US imports marketplace does large business each year, the businesses involved with it are not very big. Actually, just 4% of US import export market is consisting of huge national or multi-national corporations. Another 96% are smaller businesses. What this means is that they're lots and lots of available trading partners in the us searching for many different types of goods to import, and they're seeking both finished goods like clothing and consumer electronics and raw materials for producing their own goods.
Trade Limitations and Regulations
While in some ways importing goods into the Us has a less difficult procedure than exporting products from the Us, they're some important factors to think about when getting involved with the US imports market. The Us does charge import tariffs or taxes on a variety of goods when they enter the Us. The tax varies on the product and the country of origin, thus it is important to research this subject. The Us also limits imports of some types of raw materials to set per country quotas, thus it may be difficult to break into these markets.
The US imports huge and is continuing to grow significantly. While it is ruled by imports from a relatively small number of countries, the market expansion implies that there is lots of room for new companies to join up.
